


Saudade

by Xyriath



Series: The Monument of a Memory [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 10:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15993407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xyriath/pseuds/Xyriath
Summary: Hanahaki: the disease of unrequited love. When feelings manifest into the physical, one afflicted grows flowers in their lungs, coughing up flower petals. Though rarely fatal, left long enough, it will eventually claim the victim’s life. As surgical removal strips all emotion along with affection, many consider it a fate worse than death.In a twisted way, Keith was granted a stay of execution: you can’t have hanahaki for someone who’s dead. It’s been a year since he’s coughed up petals, a year since “Pilot Error” flashed across his television screen.But Shiro returns. Shiro isn’t dead.  And Keith had decided, months and months ago, that if he were ever given the chance, he wouldn’t let his feelings go unspoken. They have another chance—he thinks.Hanahaki takes years to kill, yes. But the Galra didn’t care; they saw it as only weakness. And any weakness within the Champion was to be removed immediately.The man named Shirogane Takashi is alive. But the Shiro that Keith had known, and laughed with, and loved, is gone. Logical, practical, and efficient: a perfect commander. Incapable of any emotion.And Keith is about to remember the taste of wisteria petals tickling at the back of his throat.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Saudade (English: /ˌsaʊˈdɑːdə/; European Portuguese: [sɐwˈðaðɨ], Brazilian Portuguese: [sawˈdadi] or [sawˈdadʒi], Galician: [sawˈðaðe]; plural saudades) is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return._
> 
> * * *
> 
> Written for the 2018 Sheith Big Bang! This is a sort of sequel to Uncurling Lifelines, a fic I wrote a year ago. As such, please keep in mind that stuff from.... idk, whatever seasons came out after 2017, I didn't take any new info into account.
> 
> Please check out the wonderful art from my artists here! [xofstardust did a set of title/summary arts](http://xofstardust-art.tumblr.com/post/178094288567/my-piece-for-the-sheithbigbang-i-was-paired) and [Nemo did a set of scenes from the fic!!!](https://art-nemonefish.tumblr.com/post/178094758826/sheithbigbang-2018-all-out-of-love-saudade-by)
> 
> This was fleshed out from a concept that one of my closest friends helped me talk out and RP; she writes an amazing Keith and a lot of his best lines are probably hers! Please check out [Getti's fic here!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epsy/pseuds/Getti)

Keith wasn’t stalking Shiro, and if anyone accused him of it, he would punch them.

Even if he was down the corridor from Shiro’s room.

But it had been about a week or so by Earth’s standards since the shuttle had landed with Shiro inside it, since they had discovered the Blue Lion and been dragged into this intergalactic mess, and Shiro had barely looked at Keith.  All they had done was share a shoulder touch or two, maybe, and generic motivational speeches.  They used to be close, but now…

Keith had always hoped that maybe they could be _more_ than close, even as it choked him.

But now, even the strangers on the ship treated Keith more warmly.

Something had to be off.  And they could fix this.  Shiro always knew what to do.  Once he realized how Keith felt, he would…

Well, _something_ had to happen.  He just had to work up the courage to step up and knock—

A soft hiss sounded from around the corner, and it took Keith a few moments to place it—long enough for brisk footsteps to echo through the corridor.  Just as Keith remembered that was how doors sounded around here, a form rounded the corner—and Shiro was nearly on top of him.

“Keith.”  The startled tone in Shiro’s voice, Keith realized, was the most inflection he had heard from Shiro since…

Since Shiro had left.

What should he even say?  He couldn’t invite Shiro anywhere; they were all stuck on the same ship.  But he had to say something to make Shiro _see_ him again.

“Uh.  Hey.”

Shiro paused, turning to focus on Keith.  His smile was there, faint, but so… distant.

“Hello, Keith.  How is your training going?”

Keith eyed Shiro warily.  “…Fine.  The Galra fight differently.  But I’m working it out.”

Shiro nodded.  “Then a good idea to adjust your own fighting style.”

He shifted his weight and hoped Shiro couldn’t see it.  “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to go get food; it’s about dinner time.  You should come, too, if you haven’t eaten yet.”

That… was that an invitation to spend time together?  As friends?  Or was that logical but cool advice from a leader trying to make sure his team stayed at peak performance?

“S-sure.”

Shiro nodded and continued down the corridor, Keith slinking along behind him.  The stride appeared purposeful and brisk, and Keith had never felt more out of place.  The silence stretched on as Shiro made his way to the kitchen, synthesizing food goo.  He apparently saw no need to say anything to Keith during the process, and Keith couldn’t gather the guts to say anything, especially once the others began to trickle in.

And once the others showed up, Keith had no desire to say anything at all.

They all began to file to the dining table, Allura and Coran chatting with each other; Pidge, Lance, and Hunk jostling each other good-naturedly.  Keith shot a furtive look at Shiro.  Unsurprisingly, he hadn't even glanced in Keith's direction.

Keith was alone.  Again.

"So," Shiro began briskly.  "How are you all doing?  How do you feel about your roles within Voltron?"

A snort from Lance's direction.  "What's with the annual review question?  'Rate your experience as a paladin from one to ten; describe a time when you overcame a problem as a team.'"  Lance steepled his fingers together, mimicking a psychiatrist.  "God, you sound like a stuffy guidance counselor."

Keith watched the interaction, somewhat numb, and went to choose a seat away from the head of the table, forcing his eyes away from Shiro.  He couldn't have made it any clearer that today was about the team, and that he planned to hold everyone at arm's length.  But then frustration spiked through him, and he detoured towards the chair next to Shiro.

Shiro was all he had.  Keith wasn't going to just... just—

Shiro couldn't block him out.  He just couldn't.

"We all have jobs to do, Lance, and mine is to make sure we all work together as a cohesive unit.  The universe is at stake."

As Keith thrust a spoon into the green goo, Lance paused next to him, shooting him a bit of an annoyed look.  Belatedly, Keith remembered his hero worship of Shiro, and that Keith had always had Shiro’s attention at the Garrison.  Keith ignored him, and Lance eventually looked away.

"Yeah, yeah, I getcha."  He leaned back in his seat next to Hunk.  "I'm good being a leg.  If we can just get more used to moving together, I think we'll be okay."

Shiro nodded, apparently not having noticed any of the exchange, and then turned to Hunk.  "And yourself?  You're an anchor of the team.  How confident are you in your abilities?"

"Uhhh."  Hunk just blinked.  "I dunno about that.  I'm just, you know, here.  I'm a leg.  And that's... cool.  I'll try my best?"

Keith sucked his spoon and wondered why they were here doing this instead of Shiro talking to him about literally anything that had happened.  Anything at _all_.

Was he just like the others to Shiro now?  Had Shiro been forced to shut his feelings away during his time in captivity?  Had everything he’d been through left him afraid to reach out?  He couldn't even blame Shiro for that.

He could blame the Galra, though.  The thought didn't give him much comfort.

While Keith had been musing, Shiro had been nodding, apparently listening intently to Hunk.  And then he turned to Keith.

"Yourself?"

No difference.  Keith gripped his spoon tighter, doing his hardest to meet Shiro's distant eyes.

"I'll follow you anywhere.  You know that."

"I understand, but I need to know how you feel about being the pilot of the Red Lion and a member of this team."

Keith set his jaw.  He'd never been a member of a team, not really.  He could do tasks in tandem with someone else, but the kind of easy camaraderie there should have been always eluded him.

Shiro knew.  They had talked about it at the Garrison, over and over again.  He _knew_.

"It's fine.  Red is easy to pilot, and Zarkon needs to be stopped."

Mostly so Keith could repay him for the scar on Shiro's nose, and the sinister gleam of his prosthetic arm.  But sure.  The greater good.  Keith was good at working for a flag.  America, Altea, it didn't really matter.

"And how do you feel on the team?"

Keith gritted his teeth.  The first indication that Shiro knew who Keith was, knew about Keith's problems, and it was a callout rather than anything comforting.  Why couldn't robot Shiro let him get away with this?

"We... don't know each other yet."

His fucking chest hurt.  Shiro had to know what he was doing.  Why was he trying to hurt Keith?

"Then let me know if there's anything I can do to help with that."  Shiro turned from Keith, easy as anything, as if the interaction meant nothing, to Pidge.

They spoke for a few moments, but Keith couldn't hear them.  Everything was static, an ongoing, shrill beep in his head.  He lifted the bowl with hands that felt too big and forced the hot prickle against his eyes to stop.

He needed to be alone until he could speak to Shiro.  Maybe Shiro had just been through a lot, or he didn’t want to show favoritism in front of the others, but Keith had heard everyone say that Shiro was _dead_ for a year.  He needed something other than a shoulder pat and a “nice to see you.”

He stood to leave.

As he did so, however, three sets of questioning eyes landed on him: Allura, Hunk, and Pidge.  They glanced at him, then Shiro, and Keith's stomach dropped.

He couldn't have everyone knowing that something was wrong.  He dumped his bowl, sorely tempted to leave anyway, to hide in the training room until his fists bled.  But he needed to make an effort.  He knew that.

Keith returned to his seat and sank down low, arms crossed.  Shiro didn't even seem to have noticed, still speaking to the others.

"You have family back on Earth, yes?  Do you want to try to get a message to them and let them know you're all right?"

Lance perked up.  "Really?  Can we?  'Cause Mami is gonna be out of her mind with me gone."

It dawned on Keith slowly, like milk curdling, as Lance prattled along, that there was something he hadn't told Shiro yet.

He swallowed.  He hadn't wanted their conversation to go like this, but he supposed he didn't really have a choice.

"Shiro..."  He pushed himself to his feet, uncharacteristically clumsy as he gripped the edge of the table.  "Can I talk to you outside?"

Every eye on the room locked onto Keith, and for the briefest of moments, he wished he had run.  Run to the training room, run to the airlock, run anywhere else but here.

Shiro stood.  "If you'd like.  What's the matter?"

Keith looked at his shoes.  "Let's talk about it... in private."

Shiro, thankfully, didn't argue.  Keith led them both out of the dining room and tried to quiet his heart.  It had been less erratic when he first piloted Red than at the thought of telling Shiro that his only family was...

They were both alone, now.

"What is it?"

Shiro didn't seem to be concerned in the slightest.  Keith wished he had even a fraction of that composure.

"I'm sorry."  He stared at Shiro's shoes now, not knowing how to say this, and then it all came out in a rush anyway.  "I... when you were gone, your dad got sick.  And I called every week, but I didn't have the money to go to Japan.  I couldn't—he just—"  Keith squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them again.  "He passed away, Shiro.  He's gone."

Keith's nails dug hard into his palms, and he told himself he had no right to cry over someone else's parent.

Even though he already had.

"Thank you for telling me," Shiro said, and there was a little bit of gratitude in his voice, but nothing else.  Keith finally lifted his eyes to see Shiro's face, still calm.  "Is there anything else?"

Keith waited for a moment.  Then another.  Shiro's face remained impassive.

"Anything el—?  Your father is _dead!_ "  He hadn't meant for his voice to rise the way it had, but his mouth seemed to have taken on a life of its own.  "He missed you, he always believed in you!  He listened to me _cry_ over you and cried with me—Shiro, who even _are_ you?"

"I'm still myself," Shiro said, still calm, then paused.  He looked as if he wanted to say something, and Keith found himself torn between wanting to know what the fuck it was and dreading whatever Shiro might share.

"I understand that I may seem strange to you.  That I've changed.  The Galra had to operate on me to save my life.”  His face stayed the same as if he were listing dinner options.  “Removing Hanahaki disease is always risky, but I ended up healthy in the end, if different."

Everything collapsed in Keith with a suddenness that left him wondering if he was actually falling.  He wildly wondered who.  Why.  When.  Had Shiro been so far gone that he might have _died?_

"What?" Keith asked helplessly.

" _What?_ "

Keith heard the words echo, and for a moment, he thought that it was only a reverberation—but no, that voice hadn't been Keith.

Shiro had clearly heard it as well.  He took two strides towards the door and pulled it open swiftly.  Lance tumbled out, ear first, with Pidge and Hunk close behind.

Keith could barely bring himself to notice, let alone care.  He realized that he had gripped the wall, that he had to keep gripping it to stay up.  This wasn't right.  It wasn't fair.

"You had hanahaki?" Keith asked quietly.

Before Shiro could answer, Lance picked himself shamelessly up off the floor.  "Why would it make you different?"

Pidge answered before Keith had to.

"The procedure to take the flowers out of the lungs removes the person’s emotions,” Pidge said quietly, staring at Shiro with an expression that mimicked the horror unfurling in Keith’s chest.

Once Pidge finished speaking, his eyes slid to Keith, horror now mingled with… grief?  Sympathy?  Keith’s throat tightened; if he hadn’t known better, he might have thought that Pidge had known about Keith’s own bout with the disease.  But Pidge had never met Shiro before; how was that possible?

Shiro didn’t seem to have noticed.  “It does, but it saved my life.”  He turned to Keith as well.  “I do regret that I had to hide it from you, back at the Garrison.  I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Reality seemed to have vanished from underneath Keith’s footing.  Shiro didn’t have feelings, not anymore, and when he did, he had loved someone else so deeply that it had almost killed him.  A twofold rejection for Keith.  Shiro wouldn’t be returning his feelings anytime soon.  Never had, never would, never even could.

Keith’s heart burned.  He knew he was in a lot of pain, but it was distant.  Keith could feel it, but as if he were outside of his body.

“And it’s gone, now?” Keith asked distantly.  “How… maybe the pods can fix the side effects.  I’ll get Coran—”

He couldn’t think about the Garrison.  The whole time he’d thought that he and Shiro had been growing close, like _that_ , the entire time Keith had been coughing up flower petals of his own and hoping that one day he would have the courage to tell Shiro, Shiro had been in love with someone else.  Someone _stupid_ , absolutely idiotic, for not returning it.

But Shiro shook his head at the suggestion.  “I don’t think so.  I’m not broken, or hurt, or sick.  If the pods put me back in the state I was in before the surgery, then I would be at risk of developing it again, and I can’t put you in that position.”

Keith shook his head violently.  “This doesn’t have anything to do with me.  I can deal with seeing you love someone else if it means that you can _feel_ something!”

“It has everything to do with you, Keith,” Shiro said, sounding mildly surprised.  “It was _for_ you.  I would have told you about the sickness otherwise, back at the Garrison.  And besides, if I died, that would leave the Black Lion without a pilot.”

A bomb went off in Keith’s soul and decimated everything.

Off to the side, he could distantly hear a strangled gasp.  Lance, maybe.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”  He struggled for breath, awkwardly overfilling his lungs and then forcing it out.  “You can’t have unrequited feelings for someone who loves you back.”

Another horrified, shocked noise from beside them, but Keith didn’t even care about their audience at this point.  Shiro blinked, a frown of confusion creasing between his eyebrows.

“What are you talking about?  You had other lovers.  I didn’t resent you for them, but…”

Because of course they had to go into the details of Keith’s sex life _and_ love life in front of the rest of the team.  But what fucking ever; this was way more important.

“I was waiting to—for you to—”  He took in a deep, ragged breath.  “Whenever I tried, you said—said ‘when I’m serious’ or—but I was _always_ serious!  They were just… I was si-ick of being alone!”

Oh fuck; he was going to cry.  He couldn’t.  Everyone would see and they already knew it was Keith’s fault that Shiro was like this now—

“Ah,” Shiro said quietly, expression still unchanged.  “I didn’t know.  I believed that your offers were casual and didn’t realize what they meant.  I’m sorry for any hurt I may have caused you.”

“No, you’re not,” Keith managed, voice shaking.  “You’re not even capable of being sorry, not anymore.”

Keith lifted his hands to his face, hiding in his hair.  It was his own fault; he had held back and waited.  He should have proven himself when he had the chance.  It was a familiar self-flagellation, one that he had ritually returned to in the time Shiro had been missing, and he sank back into it with equal parts agony and relief.

It was over for them before it had even started.

“I’m going,” he said quietly, pushing past Hunk and making to march down the corridor and away from this mess.

But a hand, shining and hard, caught his arm.

“Keith, please.  I’m not a robot; I can just think logically now.  I still value our friendship.  These things can’t be changed, so all we can do is accept it.”

Keith couldn’t even make words come out for a good few seconds.

“Accept it.  Right.  Sure.  I’ll just… skip right to being okay about this.”

“Do we have any other option?” Shiro asked, sounding like he thought he was being reasonable.  “Loving you would have killed me.  I fought it when I realized what they were doing, but afterwards, I realized the practicality of it.  It’s for the better.”

Tears finally overflowed to run fast and hot down Keith’s cheeks.  Every breath was agony.

“Let go of me.  I want to go.”

“Keith, please.  This won’t get any better if we ignore it.”

Keith whirled, tears glittering as they scattered.  “What do you want to do, huh?”  He had clenched his fists even tighter now, though the sensation of nails in his palms was the least painful part of his body right now.  “You want to talk about it?  You want to set up a five step plan for me to get over this the way I got over every other person leaving?  I know it’s not your fault, but _fuck_ , Shiro, you were all I lived for and now I need—”

He caught sight of Lance’s shocked face and nearly threw up right there.  He had never wanted to show this much of himself to these people.  They’d never understand what Keith had lost.  What Shiro had lost, too.

“I need time.”

“You haven’t lost me,” Shiro said with surprising gentleness.  “Just because I don’t feel how I did anymore doesn’t mean I still don’t value our friendship.”

“You haven’t had a conversation with me for more than five minutes until right now,” Keith spat back acidly.

Shiro blinked, as if confused as to why this was a problem.  “I haven’t had a free five minutes until right now.”

“That’s right.  You’re saving the universe now,” Keith said, voice thick, pulling Shiro’s hand from his arm.  “I guess I am, too.”

“That’s not a bad thing, Keith,” Shiro urged, and the nausea only worsened in Keith’s gut.

“Yeah.  It’s great.  Saving a planet full of people who never wanted me.”  He wiped his nose messily on his arm.  “You know, you’re right.  There’s no point getting upset about it.  The only thing that’s different about this terrible fucking day from any other is the giant space lions, so I’m taking Red out.  You go back to saving the universe.”

“I wanted you, Keith,” Shiro said firmly, and hearing him say this, now, when Keith couldn’t do anything about it, hurt worse than anything he could ever imagined.  But he pulled back.  “I still do.  Be safe.  Remember that we _all_ need you.”

“Whatever.”  Keith stormed away, thunder rolling in every footstep.


	2. Chapter 2

The hangar, like so many of the others, wouldn’t open for his handprint.  Everything here was fucking broken.  He wrenched off the cover, trying to remember the manual code.

“It’s not Shiro’s fault they operated on him.  You know that.”

Keith turned at the gentle voice, female and unfamiliar, to see Pidge behind him.

He—she?  Things seemed to click into place, but somehow, the realization that Pidge seemed to be a girl paled in significance to everything that had just happened.

“Just because he can’t feel the pain of you saying those things doesn’t mean it’s okay to say them.”  She moved him gently aside and placed her palm on the pad.  The doors glided open.  Somehow, this didn’t feel like a scolding, and for that, at least, Keith was grateful.

Still, he looked away anyway.  “…He wouldn’t let me leave.  I knew I was gonna say something shitty, so I was trying to—it doesn’t matter.  Nothing matters.”  Keith stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and stepped forward into the gloom.

“It does matter, Keith.”  She stepped forward alongside him.  “I saw him, the day of the launch.  The way he looked at you.  I was there.  Do you really think that all of that could be gone?  We’re in giant space lions.  There has to be some way to bring him back.”

“Have people ever recovered from the operation like that?”  Keith’s heart jumped for a moment before hitting the floor again, and he sagged.  “Even if we could, I hurt him.  It was enough to almost kill him, so… it feels wrong to wish he still—you know.”

“From what I know of Shiro,” she said quietly, “he would forgive you.”

Keith’s feet stopped moving.  There was more here, he could tell, with Pidge and how she knew Shiro and why she had seen them, but his ragged heart could only take one problem at a time.  “Yeah.  He would.”  He cleared his throat.  “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

She just shook her head.  “We can start with the healing pods.”

“What?”

“To cure him.  We can try the pods.”

“He said that they might bring it back…”

“And if you love him back?”

Keith’s shoulders hunched.  “That didn’t work last time.  But I would tell him.  I’d show him any way I could.”

She eyed him, exasperated.  “Loving him back?  Keith, someone has to _know_ you love them back.”

It made a twisted kind of sense.  Keith had coughed up purple flower petals until the day Shiro had vanished.  If it stopped whether or not a person realized, Keith would have found himself cured long ago.  He might never have even developed it.

“This time I’d make sure!”  Keith finally met her eyes.  “I’d swear it across the universe if it would help.”

She nodded solemnly.  “Then… then next time he’s in the pods, we should try.”  She reached out to put a hand on Keith’s arm, maybe attempting some kind of comfort.

“Yeah, okay.  We can try.  I don’t know if he’d ever agree to it, though.  He seems happy to be ‘logical.’”  His lips twisted in scorn at the word.

Pidge just shrugged carefully.  “He’s not exactly in his right mind.  And wasn’t able to consent to the first procedure.”

“…He basically said that he didn’t.”  Keith sighed, lifting both hands to run them through his hair.  “I don’t want to fuck up any more, Pidge.”

“Then we can turn him back and give him everything he needs to decide, and then ask if he wants to stay the way he was.”

Keith chewed on his lip.  “I guess.  I… I want him back.  I want that so bad.  But what if it’s not the right thing?  He said he likes being ‘practical.’”

“He also said he fought to keep it from happening.”

Keith’s stomach twisted yet again as he thought about Shiro, bound, helpless, being dragged to an operating room, strapped down as he struggled violently against a fate that, though it would kill him, would let him keep his emotions.

Let him keep his love for Keith.

“Yeah.  Yeah, he did.”  He took a deep breath.  “Let’s do it.”

Pidge nodded, glasses glinting, a determined expression on her face.  “Yeah.”

“Thanks, Pidge.  For caring.  You didn’t have to get involved in this mess.”

“He’s important to me, too, you know,” she said quietly, and Keith perked up.  “He is?”

She hesitated, but then nodded.  “Just… as Voltron’s leader.”

“Right.  Shiro wins people over quickly.”  Even how he was now.

This time, when he flew Red, he did it with a renewed sense of hope.

—

_Be careful what you wish for._

The guilt in Keith’s stomach twisted, and he swallowed.  Not just for hoping that they might find a reason for Shiro to be in a healing pod again—Sendak had seen to that—but for what he was witnessing right now.

“I did that?” Keith asked quietly, taking in the scarring and the widespread destruction.  The x-ray vision of Shiro’s lungs left him cold, down to the very pit.

“It appears so.”  Coran’s tone had an odd note of somberness to it.  “Did he say which flower it was?  It seems like it must have had thorns of some kind.”

“No.”  Keith’s voice came out choked.  He cleared his throat and tried again, pushing down the emotion.  “How’s his breathing?  Is this a problem?”

“Mmm… it looks like there’s some things that the pods can fix, but the scarring is there to stay.  It shouldn’t affect him physically, at least.  As for the emotional side effects…”  Coran shook his head.  “It’s not likely.”

Keith swallowed, and it got stuck.  All that time and Shiro was not only dealing with being tortured in space, but also by his own feelings.   _Pointlessly_ , too, because Keith would have given _anything_ for him.  He’d give his own damn lungs if he had to.

“So… there’s nothing?  Nothing we can try?”

“I didn’t say that.  It’s not exactly something the pods have had to cure before—on Altea, we could repair the damage as it happened until it went away on its own.  No need to get rid of the disease.  But this…”  He sighed.  “I’ll do what I can, Keith.”

Keith nodded tightly.  His chest was sore, like a black hole was pulling it inwards.  He rubbed at his sternum absently.

“If I can help… anything… please tell me.  I’ll do it.”

“Not likely, unfortunately, but I’ll keep it in mind.”  He reached out and patted Keith’s shoulder.

Keith nodded, forlorn.

When Coran left, Keith moved to the pod and rested his fingers on the glass.  Shiro looked so peaceful inside, the lines gone from his face.

The longer he looked at Shiro, the more painful his chest grew.  It was his fault that Shiro was like this.  He should have gone into space sooner, gone to find Shiro.  He should have done anything but sit in the desert leaving Shiro to think he was unloved.  And now he would never love Keith again—

When he tried to inhale, he realized—he couldn’t breathe.  He leaned heavily against Shiro’s pod and coughed into his hand.  It got harder and harder to hack out his breaths, each lungful tearing at his chest.  He felt something thick and angry rise behind his ribs—

He knew this feeling, he realized, with a slow, dawning dread.

When he finally coughed it free, a handful of pale purple, waxy blossoms lay in his palm.  When he coughed again, they scattered.

“Are you fucking kidding,” he rasped, voice hoarse.  He stared hard at the remaining petals in his hand, then found himself inexplicably grinning.  The laughter bubbled up and even though it hurt like hell, he didn’t even try to stop it.

Ridiculous.  From the two of them coughing up petals for each other and hiding it for the sake of their friendship, to being unendingly in love with a secretly-alive Shiro when stuck on earth, to Shiro being totally apathetic to a definitely-going-to-die Keith out in space, their situations had been reversed with a dark irony.  Of course.  Why not?  That was Keith’s whole life.  Everything hurt him in the end.  The best thing, obviously, had to kill him.

Funny, universe; he could see the joke.

He crushed the flowers in his palm and leaned his forehead on Shiro’s pod.

“I blame you for this, you and your stupid handsome face,” he murmured.

—

Shiro could feel the healing pod beginning to lessen its hold on him.

He drifted slowly into consciousness, vaguely hearing the voice.  He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew the speaker.  Keith.  He remembered loving him, intellectually, but he couldn’t quite understand it, not anymore.

In the throes of semi-consciousness, he wondered if it really _had_ made him better.

But he quickly pushed the thought away.  There was no use in worrying about it, not anymore.

His eyes flickered open slowly.

—

The machinery beeped and Keith jumped a mile.  Shiro was waking.

In a panic, he collected as many petals as he could see and shoved them all into his pockets to dispose of later.  Shiro couldn’t know.  _Nobody_ could know.  Keith didn’t want to become like Shiro.

Shiro groaned as the pod’s glass lowered.  Keith stood still, watching him.

“Hello,” he murmured, stepping forward.  “Thank you for checking on me.  I’ve recovered.”

Keith went to steady him, carefully studying his face.  “Sure.  It’s fine.  How do you feel?”

“Healed and rested.”  Shiro shook himself briskly.  “What did I miss?  Where are we with the Galra?”

“Same as always.”  Keith paused, biting his lower lip.  “The… plant.  That they pulled out of your lungs.  It had thorns.”

“Euphorbia milii.”  Shiro nodded.  “The Crown of Thorns plant.  It had small red petals, almost like circles.”  He glanced towards the exit, apparently unperturbed at the thought of a plant shredding at the soft tissue inside him.  “I always thought that it fit you.”

Keith whined before he could stop himself, dropping his head.  His heart hurt—not just his chest, but his _heart._  He rubbed his sternum again.

“I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry that you went through that because of me.  Even my flowers are fuckups.”

Shiro shook his head, smiling faintly, and god, Keith wished that he would glare or yell or flinch or _something._  Instead, he just clapped shoulder genially.  “It’s all right, Keith.  I’m healed now, and it’s in the past.  Let’s get back to the others.”

Keith wanted to argue but couldn’t think of a good enough reason to bother.  “Sure.”

This wasn’t the Shiro he loved.  That Shiro would have hugged him and mimed a slug to the face and told him exactly what Keith needed to hear.


	3. Chapter 3

The Hanahaki worsened uncharacteristically quickly.

Keith suspected it had to do with this being a relapse, instead of a brand new case.  Back at the Garrison, he’d kept it under wraps for years, with only the occasional treatment from a sympathetic nurse in the medical wing.  But then he’d gone a year without treatment, assuming that it was gone for good, and now…

Apparently his body had decided that it was time to catch up.

The tightness in his chest never went away, and every night he coughed so hard when he lay down that his throat felt like it was tearing.

But it eventually plateaued.  He found a routine: incinerate all of the petals, find places to hide when he felt an episode coming on.  Just once, during a battle in Voltron, he couldn’t stop it, and found himself terrified that the others would know through the mind link.  But Red protected him: she screened his fear and crooned at him until he could breathe again.

Then she scolded him for refusing help.

But he wouldn’t take it.  He wouldn’t let anyone erase Shiro from him; Keith had to remember for the both of them, now.

So he hid it.  And when he coughed blood into his pillow and had to clean it before sending it to the laundry, like now, he just took the stupid thing to the showers where no one would ask questions.

But as he turned the corner, Keith walked into a very wet and very naked Shiro and almost dropped everything.

“Careful,” Shiro admonished, as Keith clutched the pillowcase close and checked that nothing had fallen to the floor.

“Ah, sorry.”  Shutting out the overwhelming awkwardness of the situation, he tried to duck around Shiro’s wide form.

But if course Shiro—and the universe—wouldn’t let it be that easy.  Shiro’s wet and naked schtick had left water pooling on the floor, and as Keith took a step forward, he skidded in the puddle and immediately lost his footing.

“Woah, careful.”  Shiro reached out and caught Keith in arms with biceps the width of Keith’s goddamn _thigh._  “Watch where… Keith, why are you carrying a pillowcase?”

Fuck everything.  “I… nosebleed.  I wanted to wash it out before it stained.”  Keith pulled free and began his escape again.

But of course Shiro reached after him, grabbing for the pillowcase.  “You should use the laundry for that, not the shower.  Are you hurt?  You should go to the healing pods.”

Keith pulled it back, swallowing.  “It’s just a habit.  To wash it before it stains.”  He tried to duck around Shiro again.  “I hit a wall.”

“Then put it in the laundry.”  Shiro sighed, longsuffering, reaching out to take Keith’s shoulder with a casual strength.  Keith had never felt more like a dumb kid than he did now.

“ _Fine_ ,” Keith bit out through gritted teeth.  “I’ll go there the-en.”

His throat caught, and he swallowed.  Not now.  Please not now.

Shiro tilted Keith’s face up, inspecting the damage.  “How bad is it?  Not broken, I don’t think…”

At the proximity, Keith felt the panic rise up in him.  He couldn’t breathe, chest tight, and he ripped free of Shiro’s hands to cough raggedly into his fist.

And Shiro, beautiful, oblivious Shiro, just stared.  “Are you all right?”

Keith didn’t reply, holding up a hand to keep Shiro back, and covered his face with the pillowcase.  He turned immediately to leave.  Staying would only be a sure way for Shiro to work it out, and the nosebleed excuse would be fine if he just dumped everything this one time into the laundry chute.

Steps shaky, he lurched away back towards his room.  Each cough was like a rake dragging up his windpipe, and soft, waxy petals stuck on his teeth.

But of course, the universe couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“Keith?”  Shiro’s voice sounded from right behind him.  “Come back.  You’re sick.  We need to get you to the pods.”

“No.  Go away—”  Coughs swallowed up his protests, and tears stung at his eyes.  He pitched to the side, and his shoulder hit the wall.

“Keith.”  This time, Shiro’s tone was stern, and his face appeared back in Keith’s vision, one hand reaching out to his forehead.

Keith batted the hand away weakly, doing no more than a kitten would have.  He focused on breathing slowly, smooth, taking half breaths to avoid triggering another attack, staying frozen.

Shiro eventually moved, apparently satisfied to find no temperature, and Keith exhaled in relief as Shiro finally moved away.

But then he spotted the tiny, purple petal between his fingers, and his fear returned tenfold.

“No!”  Keith lunged for Shiro, frantic.

A foolish plan.  Shiro’s arm came up immediately, as if to block an attack, eyes widening and gaze looking at something thousand miles away.  He braced himself, other hand extended.  “Don’t—”

The guilt hit Keith immediately, but he couldn’t help the curiosity.  He hadn’t seen Shiro react with anything other than focus since he had come back.  Even what merely _hinted_ at an emotion on Shiro’s face filled Keith with nostalgia sharp enough to cut, mingling with the pain of potentially hurting Shiro.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, backing up slowly.  “You’re okay.  It’s just me.”

Just Keith.  It didn’t really mean anything now.

“I know,” Shiro replied, voice neutral, withdrawing his hand and fixing Keith with a stern look.  “But you’re not.”

Keith froze, eyes flickering up to Shiro, and he considered outright lying.  But he realized quickly that he could never come up with a feasible reason for petals to be on his bedclothes in space.

“…I’m fine,” he said slowly.  “It’s not affecting Voltron.”

Shiro shook his head.  “I’m the last person you can lie to about this.  Who is it?”

He didn’t know.  He didn’t even fucking _know._

“He’s… on Earth.”

The lie came easily.  Keith hated himself even as he said it.  His love for Shiro was the only true thing about him, all that was left of Keith now.  It was the only reason he was even here.

The thought… concerned him.  He didn’t know why.  Because Shiro couldn’t do anything about it, he decided.

“I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, Keith,” Shiro warned, tone surprisingly gentle.

Keith tried to swallow down the scratchiness in his throat.  It didn’t matter how long they were gone.  Keith was going to die.

“I know.  It’s fine.”

“It isn’t.  We should try to find you someone else.”

Anger flared sharply in Keith’s chest, and he snapped his gaze up, eyes blazing.  “I don’t _want_ someone else.  Fuck you, Shiro.”

“The choice is that or die.”

“Well, then I hope the Alteans have some space coffins ready.”

“Voltron can’t lose you, Keith.”

“Everyone else seems to manage just fine without me.  I’m sure Allura can find some other angry fuck to pilot Red.”

“You know that isn’t true.”  Shiro’s stern tone left Keith gritting his teeth.

“Isn’t it?  There’s a space savior that’s been hidden for thousands of years and it just so _happens_ that its destined pilots are all from the same Garrison on the same planet and of a species that its princess hasn’t even heard of?  This is bullshit, Shiro.  You know it is.  We don’t know how to get back to Earth, so we’re here.  But if we weren’t, someone else would be.”  His breath came in ragged gasps, shoulders heaving.  This had been building for far too long, and now that he’s let it out, it feels just as sickly and stupid as he had feared it would.  “Don’t try to tell me that I’m important to anyone here.  You were always shit at lying.”

Keith would never admit that he had been hoping to provoke a response.  That would have meant admitting disappointment when Shiro stared Keith down impassively.

“If we are the first people to be able to pilot Voltron in ten thousand years, then yes, we _are_ needed.  That is _millennia_ of the universe having no one to help.  This is not bullshit.  This is what we have to do.”

Normally, Keith’s anger felt like climbing stairs: each step up was more fire in his skin until he reached the top and leveled out again.  But this time, he took the next step, only to find nothing beneath his feet.  The anger had vanished.  Below him, only swooping emptiness.

“Well, I’m here, you’ve got me, and it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.  Guess you’ll just have to win the war before I bite the dust,” Keith said bitterly.  His eyes stung, and he reached for anger, but all he could find was pain and he _hated_ it.

“Then we will,” Shiro said evenly.  “And if you aren’t better by then, when we return, I’ll talk to him.  There was a reason I fell in love with you.  If he has any sense, he’ll feel the same.”

The words left a score of agony through his chest, worse than coughing up flower petals could ever be.  Keith took a measured breath through his nose, shook his head, and placed that new hurt carefully with the rest of them.

“It’s fine.  It’ll be over by then.”

A sweet thought after so much bitterness.  It really could be.  Keith could just throw himself into this war that he didn’t really care about, and die for a cause bigger than himself, and never have to wonder about what he’d lost ever again.

He didn’t want to see Earth again if he couldn’t be there with Shiro.  And Shiro, his Shiro, was gone.

“Don’t… don’t say that again.  That you loved me.  Please.”

“Why not?”

“…Because it hurts to think about.  I miss you.”

“But you have someone else,” Shiro said, sounding like he believed that he was the most reasonable person in the universe.

Keith wrapped his arms around himself.  “Being in love doesn’t make the old you any less gone.”

“I’m still here,” Shiro asserted, like he was actually _helping._  “Just different.  I’m not gone.  Just changed.”

“I fought every day in the desert not to cry for you.  I bet if I died right now, you wouldn’t even know how to grieve.”  Keith looked up through his bangs, wondering why he was even still arguing when the case was clearly still hopeless.  “The you that cared about me is dead.”

“That isn’t true,” Shiro said firmly.  “You are a long-time friend and a valuable asset to the team.  You _are_ important.”

“That’s not the same,” Keith said, voice resigned and hoarse.  “I want to go.  Please move.”

Shiro sighed, but moved to the side, and Keith wished he could at least appreciate the fact that Shiro wore nothing but a towel.  “I don’t understand why.”

“Because _everyone_ is an asset to the team,” Keith breathed numbly.  He wanted to believe that Shiro meant what he was saying, but every cell in him knew better.  Shiro didn’t understand a goddamn word.  “I’m really trying to not be mad at you because I know that it’s not your fault, but you’re not making it _easy_ , Shiro.”

“I just want to know how to fix that,” Shiro said quietly.

“Pretend this didn’t happen; that you didn’t see me today, and that you never loved me.  Pretend this isn’t happening.”

“I don’t understand.  That wouldn’t be the truth.”

Keith dropped his head.  One thing certainly hadn’t changed: arguing with Shiro’s sense of virtue would get him nowhere.

His chest burned inside, and it felt like it was being stretched outwards.  His ribs creaked and his lungs protested, and all Keith could do was press a hand to it.  He just wanted to be okay.  He just wanted Shiro back.  It was all he’d ever wanted.

But he’d missed his chance.

Desperately, he pitched forward, and with a cut-off whine, buried his face in Shiro’s chest.  He smelled the same, oh _god_ , like nothing had changed.  But everything was wrong now.

Shiro remained still for a moment, and Keith knew he should pull away, but after a moment, Keith felt strong arms gently wrap around him.

“Oh,” Shiro breathed gently.

Keith stiffened.  ‘Oh’ wouldn’t mean anything good.  He forced his mouth to dry swallow and then lifted his head to look at Shiro’s face.

“What?”

“It’s me, isn’t it?”

Keith pushed away and turned to leave, stride long and fast.  He wasn’t doing this.  He’d thought he wanted Shiro to touch him, but the pity burned in the back of his throat, worsening the disaster there.

This was a problem.  There was no chance Shiro would be able to reciprocate.  But maybe…

“Do you want to… date anyway?  I wouldn’t mind.”

Keith stumbled to a halt, the anger the only thing he’d felt as acutely as the pain in—in a long, long time.  It roared in his ears, a mockery of everything he’d spilled out today.

“You wouldn’t _mind?_ ” he hissed acerbically.

“Yes.  You _are_ my friend, and I do care about you.  I might not be able to give everything you want, but I have absolutely no objections to an arrangement like that if it’s what you want.”

Keith hoped this fucking disease killed him quickly.  Shiro was so sincere and genuine, and that was the worst part.  It would be so easy, just a small sacrifice to pretend he loved Keith.  Keith hated the insult as much as the temptation.

“It’s not.”  Keith looked up into the lights of the corridor and willed himself not to cry.  “It’s really not.”

He swallowed thickly and returned his gaze to Shiro.

“If you do care about me, in whatever… way that you still can, don’t tell anyone.  I’m… going back to bed.  Thanks for trying to help, Shiro.”

“Let me know if there is anything I can do,” Shiro said, and he clearly meant it.

“…Yeah.”

Keith dragged his feet to his room, but the quiet there swallowed him up, pressed in around him.  Instead, he ended up at the training deck, punching bots the whole night and trying to run from the constant desolation inside of him.


	4. Chapter 4

Warning lights flashed as Keith lurched to the side, taking two hits while he drew fire from the escape shuttle exiting the atmosphere of the planet.

Just a few more ticks and he would reach the range of the castle, and Allura would be able to take over.  It killed him to move this slow, but—

Shiro’s voice crackled to life over the comms.  “Hunk, go left!”

“I’m okay!” Keith called.  “Focus on drawing them off!”

Finally, Red hit the range of the castle, and everything following him that got too close got blasted into space dust.  Once handled, he turned in a loop back on himself.  He had to get back to the group if they were going to form Voltron.

The sensation tickled slowly at the back of his throat, unprompted.  His brain had fully focused on the mission—in that state, he felt _nothing_ , not even sadness—but for some reason it rose in him and hooked claws in his lungs.

He couldn’t breathe.

“All right, team, we’ve almost fought them off.  Group up and we can make one last push.  Keith, you all right?  It’s best if we could form Voltron.”

Keith raked in a breath and gripped the sides of the cockpit chair.  His nails scraped on the metal as his body fought for oxygen, but only a trickle managed its way into his lungs.

It hurt.  Something slammed into Red’s side, throwing him like a ragdoll in his seat.  He tried to get Shiro’s name out, but he _couldn’t._

A grunt over the comms, and Keith blinked hazily at the viewscreen to see Black rocketing between a foundering Red and the attackers.  Black responded immediately, shooting, and with support from Yellow and Blue, he finally managed to fend them off.

“Keith,” Shiro barked.  “Land.  Now.  Something’s wrong with Red.”

Red’s concern washed over him, and it was she who guided them down into the planet’s atmosphere and the Castleship.  He popped off the armor and clawed at his own chest, feeling the burn of his nails through the suit.

He hacked, and petals started in a wet clot, spattered with red, but quickly turned into a dry flutter.  Their bitter taste filled his mouth and he barely noticed them landing.

He heard people outside, and Red clamored at him to let them in to help.

“No!” he gasped out, wordlessly begging her to keep them away.  They couldn’t know.  They would take it all away from him and make it empty.

Something banged authoritatively on her hull.

“Keith,” Shiro ordered.  “Tell her to open.  Something’s wrong.”

In his head, Red nosed at him, and her concern seeped into Keith’s soul.  The floor was awash with purple, fluttering into corners and collecting in the crevices of his chair.

Everything was growing fuzzy.  Keith heaved in a breath and managed an order on the exhale.

“Shiro.”

Red let him in.

Shiro didn’t speak for several moments, presumably as he assessed the situation.

“You said this hadn’t gotten bad,” he finally said, voice stern, kneeling next to Keith and checking his pulse.  “You could have been killed.”

Keith shuddered in a breath and prayed that it didn’t catch.  Shiro’s hand on his neck radiated warmth, and petals scattered whenever he moved his feet.

“Never… usually like this.”  He took greedy gulps of air and tried not to move.

“We need to get you into the castle,” Shiro said firmly, and he scooped up Keith immediately, stepping out of Red.

Keith struggled, but there was no strength in it.  He knew, logically, that he couldn’t possibly fight against Shiro.  Not like this.

Instead, he buried his face in Shiro’s shoulder and hoped that he died before he had to explain himself.

“You know I don’t want to go,” he gasped.

“You have to,” Shiro said firmly, and then, “He’s sick.”

“Shiro, please,” Keith begged quietly.  He didn’t look up, but Shiro’s words meant that the team must be there.  He didn’t want to tell them anything about this stupid situation, and he especially didn’t want to admit that he was in love with the guy who got hanahaki over him.  He would _never_ admit that it had been there before Shiro had left.  “I need time.”

“You need _treatment_ ,” Shiro said firmly.

“What’s wrong with him?” came Hunk’s anxious voice.

Stubbornly, Keith said nothing, and Shiro at least seemed to know that he shouldn’t share that much.  He coughed a little into Shiro’s soldier and wished that Altean teleporting worked on a small, Keith-sized scale.

“I’m warping us out of here; hold on, Paladins!” Allura called over their comms.

“Keith,” Shiro said quietly.  “If it’s this bad already, we need to explore other options.”

“There aren’t other options,” Keith insisted.  The castle rocked and screeched, then stopped.

“There are.  The healing pods, or surgery, if those don’t work.

“No surgery,” Keith said firmly before coughing into his hand.

“You have to understand that it might be the only option.”

“No!”  Keith banged on Shiro’s chest with a closed fist, and Shiro didn’t even bat an eyelid.  “No.”

“We’ll… try the healing pods first.”

Keith sagged in surrender.  The healing pods weren’t the same as surgery; they would help him get his strength back, and then he would be able to fight them off if they tried to put him under the knife.

His throat had already started to unclench.  He tested taking deep breaths through his nose.

“Fine.”

“You should tell them,” Shiro said in a quieter voice.  “Before they find out.”

Keith didn’t know if it was the relief at being able to breathe or just being sick of being alone, but honesty poured forth.  “I don’t want them to know.  I feel stupid.”

“It isn’t,” Shiro said calmly.  “It happened to me.  That wasn’t stupid.”

“You weren’t stupid.  You were brave.  Doesn’t make _me_ any less stupid.”

“I don’t see how either of us could be more or less stupid than the other.”

“I made you think that I didn’t love you, to the point where you almost died.  And it’s my fault you can never love me.  I did this to both of us.”  Keith hid his eyes in the crook of Shiro’s neck.  “I was stupid.  And I’m sorry.  So sorry.”

Shiro sighed and shook his head.  “No.  I’m the one who chose not to say anything.  This isn’t your fault.”

“It is.  It always is.  Just let me go, Shiro.  I don’t want to stay anymore.”

“I’m not going to let you die.”

Keith didn’t even realize that he was crying until he couldn’t breathe through his nose; he squeezed his eyes shut at the startling and embarrassing revelation.

“I know,” he said, voice and heart full of regret.  “Can I get in the healing pod now?”

Shiro nodded, carrying him to the pods, concerned paladins trailing behind him.

Keith didn’t meet anyone’s eye as he was stripped down and strapped in.  He didn’t say a word to Coran, tolerating touches for mere seconds.

The blank emptiness of the pod would be a blessing.  He hoped they never took him out.

—

Despite being prepared for the weakness, Keith ended up buckling at the knees when the door finally opened.

He looked over at Shiro before he did anything else.  It was hard to tell if the pain in his chest was really love, now, but it was still there.  And that was all that he really cared about.

“It didn’t work, did it,” he muttered.

“Coran said that it can’t be cured,” Shiro said quietly.  “Not without removal.”

A death sentence.

“Okay.”  Keith steadied himself on his own feet.  “Was the princess mad?”  He swallowed.  “…Do the others know?”

“She wasn’t mad.  The oth—”

The sound of a door whooshing open, and Lance burst in, the others following, his skin gray underneath his darker tone.  “Keith, holy _shit,_ ” he gasped.  Keith had never seen him genuinely afraid before.  “You’ve got Hanahaki?  For _who?_ ”

Keith could tell from the other expressions in the room that Lance was the only one who didn’t know.

“Not your business, Lance,” he clipped, making his way to the lockers to grab real clothes.  Still, he did stop to accept a small, harsh hug from Pidge.  She didn’t say anything, but he knew, he thought, what she meant when she thumped him in the arm as she let him go.

Lance just looked over at Hunk.  “Do _you_ know?”

Hunk wrung his hands.  “Uhhh, well, I think.  Um.  It’s not my place to, uh.”  He cracked.  “Dude.  C’mon.”

Keith slammed the locker shut.  “It’s Shiro.”  He turned his back on them.  “I’m not getting surgery, and I don’t want to talk about it.  There, now you know.”

“But Shiro’s like a _robot!_ ” Lance blurted.  “You’ve got no chance!”

Keith took a shaky breath.  “Yeah.  I know.”  He clenched and unclenched a first, trying to warm the muscles there again.  He could work out the weird feeling that came from being in a pod in the training room.  If he could just leave now, without thinking about it in-depth, without looking at Shiro, he would be fine.

“Then if it’s this bad already…”

“Keith.”  Shiro’s tone was stern.  “We need to talk about this.”

“No, we don’t.  You’ll tell me to get surgery and I’ll say no, and we’ll argue and I’ll get mad and you’ll finally break out your ‘leader’ voice and tell me it’s for the good of the team, and I’ll storm out and you’ll give me exactly twelve hours to calm down before you try again.  Well, now I’ve saved us all the trouble, and we can skip that, and you can just let me _deal_ with it.  Alone.”

Keith turned back to see that Shiro had crossed his arms, and Keith could practically _hear_ those mechanical gears in his brain whirring.  Keith could be uncooperative.  Let him calm down, for now, and try again later.  “I’m not going to do that.  I just want you to think about all your options.  I’m not making you pick any one of them.  Just think about them, please.”

“It’s all I ever think about,” Keith admitted quietly.  He wanted, so badly, to talk about this with Shiro.  He’d come to rely on that.  Shiro had taught him how to share his problems and overcome his hurdles with support.  And now he had to put on his lonely armor again, and it didn’t fit right.  He’d outgrown it while resting on his haunches.  “There’s no good option.”

Shiro sighed, reaching out to lead Keith away from the group.  Keith followed dutifully.

“I _have_ offered to be in a relationship with you.  If you refuse the surgery, that might be the best option.”

Keith’s shoulders slumped.  Why was he so insistent on that?  How could he even _begin_ to think that was a good idea?  Maybe for someone who had zero understanding of human emotion, it made sense, but that didn’t do Keith any good.

“Do you even want to be with me?”  He focused on a spot on the wall, but the thought of Shiro asking him about this again was worse than anything else he could imagine.  “You know what, don’t answer that.  Fine.  We’re boyfriends now, I guess.  Congrats.”

“Only if you want to be,” Shiro reminded him, ever practical.

“I don’t know what I want.”  He reached out for Shiro’s hand and ran one finger down his wrist.  Keith did know what he wanted.  Needed, now.  But he was never going to get it.  “If it means I don’t have to get the surgery, then… it’s the best option, I guess.”

Shiro stared down at the finger, and Keith wished that there was something more than cool assessment in his gaze.  “Tell me what you need,” he said, firm and resolute.

“What do you do when you’re with someone you actually love?  I know how to… have sex.  I know how to do all the things that ruined this when I’m with strangers.  But with you…  I’ve never been with someone that I was gonna stay with.  What do you do with a real partner?”  Keith was lost.  The time with Shiro spent under the stars, in dingy study halls, and downtown diners, all meant so much more than anything in a bed.

But still… the idea of being in bed with Shiro crossed his mind.  Heat flushed across his skin.

“I have no idea,” Shio admitted frankly.  “I haven’t had any serious relationships, either.”

“…Oh.”  Keith’s voice was small.  He’d known that; Shiro had always said that he was too busy for that.  His eyes flickered down to the floor, and he frowned in thought.  “In movies, they go on dates.  And do big, romantic gestures.”

“We could watch a movie on Pidge’s laptop,” Shiro offered, and the words sent nostalgia lancing through him.

“…Like back when I was a cadet,” Keith acquiesced quietly.  “It’s a shame we don’t have popcorn.  Or your shitty couch.”

Shiro hesitated, and Keith watched him, wondering what the memories must be like now.

“I don’t understand why we watched those,” he admitted.

Keith swallowed.  “You didn’t like watching bad movies?  I thought that we, you know, found them… fun.”  Keith hadn’t really known fun.  Serious, sad, and angry, he hadn’t known how to unwind at all until Shiro had showed him how to channel his anger, overcome it, and how to lay aside everything and just _be_ for a while.  He thought they’d been having fun together.

“Maybe.”  Shiro shook his head.  “‘Fun…’  It’s a bit of a foreign concept.  There’s a lot that I remember that I don’t understand, now.”

“Oh.  Then, what do you like now?”  Keith felt himself shrinking inwards, but he was still trying.  This was his last chance, and he felt it in his bones.  He had to try, because if this didn’t work then nothing would and it would be time to give up.  “Just because you don’t feel stuff doesn’t mean we can’t do things that you like.”

“Well, liking things is tied to emotions, isn’t it?” Shiro mused.  “I like when things go well.  When the team performs admirably.  I like when people are safe.”

The frustration welled up again, a familiar feeling, but it wasn’t the numbness that had plagued Keith for so long, so he supposed that it was a win.

“This isn’t going to work,” he said softly.

Shiro blinked over at him in what might approximate surprise.  “But why not?”

Keith shook his head.  He couldn’t explain to a man who couldn’t understand love why he could tell that it wasn’t there.  Why he was sad that Shiro didn’t even share their old interests now.  “We’ll try.  Sometimes impossible stuff happens.”

“So, we are trying this?”

“Sure.  Yeah, I’m just—talking to you like this reminds me what’s different.  Nothing to be done about that.”

“Then just let me know what you need me to do,” he said firmly.

Keith tried to think about it logically for a moment, rejecting everything he’d planned long-term.  They made his shattered pieces freeze.  So he started small.

“You used to hug me.  When we were just… standing around or making food.  I liked that.”

Shiro nodded, then stepped forward, wrapping an arm casually around Keith’s shoulder.

Keith tensed for a moment, but then forced his muscles to unlock.  He melted slowly into Shiro’s side and tried to find some comfort in the familiar smell, the warmth that he would have given anything for when he was alone on cold desert nights.

“Do you ever wonder what we could have had if this hadn’t happened?  Or is that something you don’t even think about now that you don’t feel things anymore?”

“I would be dead,” Shiro said, not sounding terribly interested.

“That’s a no, then.”  Keith sighed.  “I thought about it a lot when you were… weren’t there.  And I think about it now.  I always wanted to see space with you, to find something bigger and faster to fly.  I guess we managed that one.  But I thought we’d have a home to go back to, together.”  He swallowed.  “I was saving up!  I wanted to surprise you with an apartment when you got back.  Stay off-campus.  Just the two of us.  But by then…”

A pause.

“I thought space would be better than Earth, once, but it’s worse.  I dream about going back, but then I remember that it won’t be anything like what I planned.”  The hopeless feeling crawled over him again, and Keith stopped his rambling.  Shiro hadn’t moved.  It was like hugging a statue.  “Sorry, I’m just talking shit.”

“It’s all right,” Shiro said, softly encouraging.  “We can make space better, though.  That’s what we’ve been brought out here to do.  I fully believe that we’re the best chance that the universe has, and once we do, we can bring that to Earth, too.  There’s still hope.”

Keith closed his eyes in agony, murmuring, “Zarkon isn’t what’s wrong with space.  Not for me.’

Being out among the stars should have made him feel free from human obligation, from agonizing over his social ineptitude.  Or he was supposed to be here with Shiro, finally with the family he’d _chosen._

Instead, he fumbled around Lance, with all his competition, and had no idea how to bridge the gap between these people he absolutely _had_ to find a way to trust.

And Shiro might as well not even be here.

He sighed and carefully unwrapped Shiro’s arm from his shoulders.  Then he stood on the top of his toes to press a kiss to one fine cheekbone, just a small gesture of affection—

And then Shiro turned.

Keith gasped, finding himself almost nose to nose with Shiro.  Up close, Keith could see his fine and sweeping eyelashes, make out little freckles hiding just under his skin.

His instinct was to pull away.  He didn’t want his first kiss with the man he loved to be out of pity.  It would be a pale attempt at what Keith had dreamed of, a statue instead of a man, and no real feeling between them.  Only the banking embers of Keith’s heart.

But then his chest panged, and the waxy, perfumed taste of flowers was at the back of his tongue, and he remembered that he was _dying._

There were a lot of things he would die unable to try.  Who could begrudge him for taking this one thing, just for himself?

So haltingly, cautious, like a baby deer on new legs, he did.

Keith had seen kisses on commercials, mostly; the ones for engagement rings where all the lights went on and a lot of violins started playing.  In his own experience, he’d always thought it was like some sort of high five on the lips, and kind of pointless.

But the idea of it had crept up on him at the Garrison.  And now he was here, with Shiro, and it wasn’t like a high five.  It wasn’t really like any other touch at all.

Keith’s trust in Shiro, even in this state, allowed him to close his eyes, to take in the other sensations alongside it all.  Warm, smelling faintly of home—letting someone getting too close to his face, his eyes, his neck, all the easy parts to go for in a fight, had always left Keith feeling vulnerable.  But that was kind of the beauty of it.  They never had to defend themselves against each other, not like that.

If he had this for real, he’d grow to love kissing Shiro.  The thought cracked through his heart.

Shiro remained still for several moments, reciprocating a bit, and as Keith found himself faltering, Shiro pulled back.  Keith’s eyes fluttered open again to see Shiro smiling encouragingly, and for the briefest of agonizing moments, it was almost as if—

“How was it?”

Keith breathes for a moment, flushed.  “…Warm,” he finally settled on.

Shiro nodded, as if Keith had just offered him the time of day.  “Good.  Just let me know if you want to again.”

“…Okay.”

Keith wondered what it would be like to wake up to one of those every day.  He wanted to know how it felt to be loved like that—loved at all, even.  The brief time he’d had with Shiro before Kerberos was already fading at the edges.  If he’d have known it was all he’d ever get, he’d have done so much differently.

“How was it… for you?”

He didn’t want the answer to that question, and he hated himself immediately for asking it.

Shiro watched Keith carefully, and Keith had to look away.  “Probably much different than for you,” was all he said.

“Yeah.  Sorry.  Forget it.”  Keith tugged the sleeves of his coat over his thumbs and hunched his shoulders.  He had to avoid getting caught up.  Shiro wouldn’t feel anything, and that wasn’t his fault.

“I’m going to the training deck,” he blurted.

“Do you need a sparring partner?” Shiro offered.

“…Sure.”  Keith shrugged.  He turned his back on Shiro and left before his eyes could rest too long on Shiro’s lips again.


	5. Chapter 5

The sparring became a regular occurrence, the one time where things _almost_ seemed back to normal between the two of them.

The armor left him feeling better.  It blocked out the world in a way that Earth leather couldn’t, and Keith put his helmet on in relief.

He could still fight.  Even as his heart betrayed him, fighting came naturally.  Activating his bayard, he swung it in his hand.

“Are you ready?”

Shiro elected to use his arm instead, crouching into a fighting stance that looked as natural as breathing.  “Ready.”

Keith took a deep breath and sank into himself.  The world around him didn’t change, but the perception of it did.  He saw surfaces as angles, calculating distance on pure instinct.  He found it so much easier to understand everything this way, much easier than people or aliens or his own backwards heart.

He sprung at Shiro, going straight for the arm because he knew Shiro wouldn’t actually want to hit him with it.  Keith didn’t much care on that front.  It gave him a morbid advantage.

Shiro immediately lifted the arm to block, aiming a punch with his left arm at Keith’s gut.  Keith took the hit but folded to minimize damage.  Though he had pulled the punch, Shiro wasn’t fucking around today.

Keith wouldn’t either.

They fought like water, fluid as they spun through the motions.  They had fought so many times by now that they found it difficult to surprise each other anymore.  Keith barely avoided a clinical, expert swipe at his throat, then went for the back of Shiro’s knee.

Shiro collapsed into it, turning it into a roll, then struck a leg out to incapacitate Keith.  Though Keith hadn’t had much opportunity to practice in the past year, Shiro hadn’t lost any of his reflexes, not with all his time in the arena.

It connected solidly, and Keith bit his lip when he hit the ground, coming up bloody.  He had no time to recover as he scrambled away from the next hit, and though he went for Shiro’s stomach next, as he lunged forward, a tight pain seized his chest.

He jerked for a moment, trying to catch his balance, but collapsed to the ground, breathing raggedly, all other thoughts gone from his mind.

“Keith.”  Shiro knelt next to him, voice distant and urgent.  “Are you all right?”

Keith tried to push him off weakly.  He hated this.  All he had to rely on was his body—the only thing in the universe that had never left him.  And now even that was giving up on him.  He couldn’t find anywhere to run from all this shit.

“Fine… a second,” he gasped, wrenching control back.  He refused to let this control him anymore.

Angrily, he spat petals to the floor.

Shiro sighed, reaching out to lift Keith.  “We need to go to the healing pods.”

“There’s no point.  I’m fine.  Let’s just shower.”  He tried not to lean on Shiro’s weight, but couldn’t help it.  As always.

Shiro, of course, scooped him up, regardless of any protests.  “You might need a bath.  I’m not sure you can stand right now.”

Keith gave up, leaning his head on Shiro’s chest.  His breaths rasped, but he could breathe.  A win, probably.

“You always did like to mother me.”

“You need it,” Shiro said firmly.  “Besides, I’m supposed to, as your boyfriend, right?”

“Probably.  I never had one before.”

Shiro carried Keith to his room, turning on the bathtub.  “You’ll be all right.  Can I do anything to help?”

“…Come here?” Keith asked tentatively, holding open his arms but unable to look up from the floor.

Shiro walked over obediently, Stepping into Keith’s arms and holding him.

Keith just squeezed for a moment, trying to remember that even this was better than Shiro being “dead” among the stars.  Even this was better than the universe being robbed of someone like Takashi Shirogane.

“Sorry for being an asshole.  I’ve been taking stuff out on you.  It’s not your fault.”

Shiro only shrugged.  “I know it isn’t, but if you need to express your frustrations, I’m here for that.”

Offering to be Keith’s punching bag.  Wonderful.  “No.  Pidge was right.  It isn’t right to do that.”  Keith let go.  Scooting around Shiro, he made for the bathroom that was billowing steam.

“Do you think having sex will help?” Shiro asked, as casual as if he’d offered Keith a bite of dinner.

Keith walked into the doorframe.

In the space of time it took to raise a dumbstruck hand to the pain on his forehead, he tried to think of a way to respond that wouldn’t betray the red gash of anger through him at the notion.

“No.  Why the hell would it help?”

“It can help with an emotional connection.  I don’t think it’ll do the same for me, but it might at least slow the progression of the disease.”

“That’s… no.  Sex is just empty most of the time,” Keith said bitterly.  He knew what it was like to have sex without feeling.  “It doesn’t connect you to anyone—it just makes you hollow and lonely.”

Shiro shook his head.  “That’s not how I understand it, but you would know better than me.”

Keith found himself curious, if morbidly so.  He lifted his head.  “How do you understand it?”

“Well, objectively there has to be some reason, from an evolutionary perspective, to make a species want to continue mating, in order to continue that species.  And humanity has placed an overwhelming emphasis on the importance of emotions and sex, so there must be some emotional aspect to it for most people.  And I know that before my surgery, I saw it as a potentially emotional act with a prospective partner, and my desire to engage in it stemmed from a desire to deepen that emotional bond.”

Keith tried to tap into Shiro’s mode of thinking, and it reminded him suddenly of when they would discuss their exam answers.  “You don’t have a bond to deepen.  I already… have an attachment to you.  You can’t form one for me.  The emotional growth would only be negative.”

Shiro frowned, and the confusion on his face meant that they were getting into too-emotional territory.  “You would lose interest, then?”

“It would… hurt,” Keith admitted with some difficulty.

“But in a way that would lessen your feelings?”

“I don’t think anything will lessen my feelings.  Even when I thought you were dead…”

“But you weren’t coughing up flowers then.”

Keith hesitated, licking his lips.  “I… you were dead.  I thought you were… you can’t… you can’t have hanahaki for someone who’s dead.”  He rubbed at his face.  “It would have been better if I’d kept it and died.  I couldn’t face a universe without you in it.”

“And before that?”

Keith was silent for a moment.  Two moments.  Several moments.

And then Keith looked up at him wretchedly.

“Oh,” Shiro said quietly.  “I see.”

“Yeah.”  Keith ran a hand through his sweaty hair.  “So, thanks for spitballing, but that’s not the miracle we’re waiting for.”

“I’ll try my best to find something,” Shiro promised.  “Most problems have a solution.”

“I know you will,” Keith said dully.  He knew what Shiro’s idea of a solution was—the same one that had “fixed” Shiro.  He slipped into the bathroom, peeling off his armor.  He wasn’t a bath sort of guy, but sinking into a silent world had an appeal.

Shiro, of course, fucking followed.

“Do you want me to help you wash your hair, or back?  Bathing a partner is romantic, right?”

“You’re just gonna follow me everywhere anyway.  You might as well get in.”

Shiro eyed him skeptically.  “I’ll leave if you’d like.”

_You leave regardless of what I’d like._

_It hurts whether you go or stay._

“I don’t care,” Keith settled on.  He wrenched off his undersuit.

Shiro sighed.  “Call me if you need anything.”  He turned to head out of the room.

“Don’t!” Keith managed, strangled.  “I do care.  Stay.  Please.”

Shiro paused, but then nodded, going to sit on the toilet.  “All right.”

Keith blushed at his idiocy, feeling stupid, and then blushed more when he felt awkward at his nakedness and knew it was his own fault that Shiro was here.

He scrambled into the tub quickly and settled in the water.  For a moment, he had no idea what he should even do.

“Can I get you anything?”

Keith shook his head.  He chose to go into army mode: duck under, wash hair, scrub skin, clean behind the ears.  He finished the bath with ruthless efficiency, then sloshed out of the tub with a wave of water across the tile.

Shiro, blessedly, turned his head to give Keith privacy as he held out a towel.

Keith barely got himself from wet to damp before he tugged an unsuspecting Shiro to the bed by one arm, ignoring the way he stumbled, dropping the towel and crawling in.  Stubbornly, he pointed at the empty space beside him.

“Get in.”

Shiro sat obediently on the edge of the bed, removing his shoes and armor.  “Just a moment.”

Keith let his hands drop to the sheets, trusting that Shiro was coming.  “It’s kind of nice to be doted on, I guess.  At least I’ll die spoiled.”

A joke that Shiro would have made.  It sat like bile in the back of his throat.  An improvement to flower petals, at least.

“You aren’t going to die,” Shiro said firmly.  “We’ll find something.”

“Okay,” Keith said, resigned.  He’d follow Shiro, follow his suggestions, and maybe the one in ten billion miracle would actually happen.  Until then, he had his own plan.

No one liked a moping pessimist, anyway.  Well, no one now that Shiro had forgotten how to like things.

“We should get you back to the healing pods, too,” he said.  “To help with the recent damage.”

“Right, yeah.”  Once Keith would have felt like healing pods wasted time in the same way sleep wasted time, like he needed every second to train or study or work.  Now, though, sinking into nothing looked more and more appealing, and even though that thought should scare him, it didn’t.

No, he thought to himself.  That’s not who he wants to be.

He grabbed Shiro’s hand for support and made himself get up.

“Half an hour, yeah?  That should be enough.

Shiro simply nodded, offering him clothes.  “I’ll wait for you.”

“You don’t have to.  I’ll just be passed out anyway.”  Keith looked at the floor as he dressed, but took Shiro’s hand again when he finished.

“All right.  I’ll come back when you’re done.”

They made their way along the now-familiar trek to the pods, and it took great force of will to release Shiro’s fingers and face the healing pod.  Keith forced himself to pull on the ugly white suit and step inside.  Every time he did this, it became less effective; Coran had warned them enough times by now.  But he couldn’t die yet.  The universe probably didn’t find oblivion as appealing as he did.

Clambering in, he looked up to meet Shiro’s eyes.  “See you on the other side,” he promised.

Shiro lifted a hand in neutral acknowledgement, then turned away.

Of course.  Things to do.


	6. Chapter 6

To see Lance, of all people, waiting for him outside the healing pods, hands stuffed in his pockets and watching Keith carefully, surprised him more than anything else would have.  Keith had expected Coran at best, and no one at all if he were being honest with himself.  He glanced at Lance, then took his time exiting the healing pod in silence, trying to minimize the spinning of his head and the jelly of his legs.

“You’re a mess, man,” Lance said flatly.

Keith bristled.  “Who asked you?”

“No one, but they should’ve.  We need to fix this.”

Keith took a deep breath and finally stood without the help of the pod.  It sank into the floor.  “What do you suggest, then?”

He braced himself for the inevitable.

Lance scratched at the back of his neck.  “These are futuristic aliens.  There’s gotta be some way to put Shiro back together.  A surgery got rid of the flowers, so what if they like…”  He gestured his hands.  “Could put them back in?”

Keith frowned.  He’d been expecting Lance to insist on surgery, not to think outside the box.

“You saw his lungs.  Any plant that goes in there will rip him apart again.  They had thorns.  More than thorns.  _Spikes._ ”

“Yeah, but...”  Lance hesitated, then swallowed.  “But you love him, right?  So they should go away right after.”

Keith paused.  Could he really risk that?  Would he really risk hurting Shiro again for the chance to stop his own pain?

“I don’t… we can’t hurt him.  What if it just gets worse?  I felt like that for him before and it still… it still grew.”

“You know that’s not how it works,” Lance shot back, and Keith had to look away at the unspoken accusation that he was making excuses.

He crossed his arms and dug his nails into his biceps.  He couldn’t help feeling like Shiro was dead, or that _his_ Shiro wouldn’t want to be stuck this way.

“Do you really think we could?”

Lance snorted.  “Hurt him?  Keith, he’s already been hurt.  What kinda existence do you think he’s living?  Worse than yours, even.”  He crossed his arms right back at Keith.  “I don’t know if it’ll work.  But we have to do _something._

Keith nodded sharply.  “Right.  Yeah.  Have you spoken to Coran or Allura about this?  Do they know how it would work?”

“Nope.  Wanted to know if you’d play ball first.”

Anger spiked through Keith.  “You asked me that without any evidence it would even _work?_ ”

“How the hell was I supposed to _get_ evidence?  You’d be mad if I’d gone around asking to do it without your permission, too!”

“You—!”  Keith caught himself.  He was getting dragged into anger again instead of solving anything.  Lance had brought a potential solution, and he needed to calm down and start researching to see if it would actually work.  “You’re right.  Sorry.  I—let’s go.  Let’s go find out now if that’s something they can do.”

“Sure,” Lance said shortly, still watching him warily as Keith wrestled off the ugly white healing suit and pulled on his clothes.  On the screen, he could see his own lungs.

Worse.  So much worse.

“Are they on the bridge?  You don’t have to come.  I won’t tell anyone it was you if you don’t want me to.”

“Yeah.  I don’t care.  Do you want me there or not?”

Keith had to think about it for a moment, and then take a moment longer to allow himself to answer.

“…I’d appreciate it if you came.  The backup would help.”  Keith bit the inside of his cheek; he deserved Lance’s curt replies.  “Thanks.  For helping.”

“Don’t worry about it, man.”  Lance clapped Keith on the shoulder.

—

Keith stopped outside Shiro’s door, first raised, hovering above the metal.  In his other hand, the syringe sat cold and heavy.

“You can leave anytime,” Keith said quietly to Lance.  “If you want to.”

“Do you want me to?” Lance retorted, watching him carefully.  “It could be really awkward.”

 _No_ , he wanted to say.

“I don’t know.  It’s probably going to be like arguing with a wall.”

“Dude, just give me a yes or no.”

Keith swallowed.  Lance had been next to him through all of this, through the solemn discussion with Allura and Coran, through the brainstorming and spitballing of ideas that had more chance of failing than succeeding.

Eventually, they’d come to the agreement that reinfection would be the option with the highest chance of success.  Unheard-of, of course; who would have ever wanted to infect someone with hanahaki?  But using Keith’s flowers as a base, they had managed to have the castle synthesize _something_ with the properties of the disease.

Whether or not it would work was another matter entirely.

“Fine.  Yes.”  Keith slapped a mental patched over his irritation and knocked three times.

Several seconds later, the door opened, revealing Shiro.

“Keith.  Lance.  What do you need?”

Biting the inside of his cheek, Keith squeezed past Shiro and into the room.  He took a breath and turned to face Shiro properly.

“We have a potential solution to—uh.  To me.”

Shiro didn’t seem to mind the intrusion, stepping aside to allow Lance to follow.  “You’ve decided to get the surgery?”

“No.  We want to undo yours.”  Keith held out the syringe and stared Shiro dead in the eye.  “You have the procedure reversed, but the disease will die out this time.  Since I—since it’s requited.  It’s a win-win.”

Shiro eyed the syringe calculatingly, and Keith wondered how he was weighing this option.

“It’s that simple?  This is from the Alteans?”

Keith swallowed.  “It seems simple.  Whether or not it’ll work is… it’s a long shot.  Allura and Coran are willing to answer any questions, but I wanted to ask you first.”

Shiro nodded.  “Is there anything else I need to know?  Should I be near the healing pods, or can you administer it right here?”

Had something, for once, gone right in the universe?  “You want to?”  Keith took a tentative step forward.  “Really?”

“It’s the reasonable thing to do,” Shiro said easily.  “Better for me to lose the advantage of increased efficiency than lose an entire person.  It’s logical.”

Keith had to force himself to wake up and inhabit his body properly.  If this worked, he would get Shiro back.  For _real._

“Okay.  Then you can take it here.  But you have to report any physical changes to Coran, just in case.”

Shiro held out his left arm.  “You can administer it?”

“Yeah.  It’s just a basic injection.”  Keith bit his lip, trying to steady his shaking hands as he reached for Shiro’s arm.  He was warm.

“Then go ahead.”

Nodding once, Keith pushed the button on the Altean syringe, then pressed it into the soft skin of Shiro’s arm.  Three ticks later, it shot the serum directly into his blood.

Keith’s eyes flicked to Shiro’s face immediately, even though he knew that it couldn’t possibly happen that quickly.

“How long will it take?”

“Coran said anywhere up to twelve hours.  Can you… feel any change?”  Keith looked up at him through his hair, scared that it hadn’t worked, scared that it _had._

“Not really.”  Shiro glanced back over at Keith.  “I’ll let you know if I do.”

The ends of Keith’s arms and legs filled with lead.  He clenched his hands into fists.

“Oh.  Yeah, okay.  It might take time.”  The syringe sat cold in his hand now that it was empty.  Keith’s heart beat so wildly inside him that he wondered if it would give out before Shiro even saw a change.

He might get Shiro back.  He might not have to die.  He might finally get to stand at Shiro’s side the way he’d always dreamed he would.

Or he might… not.

Shiro nodded, unconcerned with Keith’s inner turmoil.  “Any news on the Galra?”

Keith felt the syringe crack, and he hastily loosened his fists.  “Allura said something about a mining planet nearby with an Altean base.  She seemed to think there might be some equipment.

He rubbed his nose and looked away.  Kill the hope now.  That was the best thing to do.  He could feel it, violence loitering behind something soft.  He refused to look at Lance.

“’Course, the Galra are there already.”

“If the numbers are small enough, we can do something about it.”  He clapped Keith on the shoulder, then Lance.  “Let’s go.”

Keith pulled in a breath and squared his shoulders.  “Sure.”  Put the mission first.  Follow Shiro out.  He had to wait and let whatever would happen, happen.  But he couldn’t help but stare at the back of Shiro’s neck and _hope._

—

The mission went fine.  Shiro didn’t feel any different.

He wasn’t sure why they had thought it would work, anyway; the notion had seemed a bit desperate to him, borne from emotion rather than reason.  Still, he did his best to be cordial to Keith.  He must be hurting.

Nothing changed.

They got back in the lions and nothing changed.  They got back to the hangar and nothing changed.  They headed to the showers and nothing changed.  Twelve hours passed with no indication of anything different.

Keith eventually shuffled over to Shiro’s side.

“It didn’t work,” he surmised.

Shiro came as close to relief as was possible for him that Keith had realized this on his own.

“It didn’t,” he said, keeping his tone gentle.  “But it was a good thought.”

Keith clenched his hands once, then again.

“Yeah.  Thank you.  For trying.”

—

Hope bled from Keith like pus from a wound.  He was going to die and Shiro was in a shell and that was easier to accept when he wasn’t searching for a miracle cure all the time.

“Does this mean you’re going to get the surgery?”

Keith thought about it.  Hard.  It was tempting when he knew he wouldn’t have to feel this anymore.  He could become a tool of the resistance and forget all about the dumb dreams he’d chased.

 But that would be it.  No one would remember how Shiro had made him feel.  No one would know that Keith Kogane had ever managed to be _happy._

“The next time it compromises a mission.  I… I’ll consider it.  But not yet.  Please.”

Shiro sighed, but didn’t look surprised.  “Understood.  You should visit the healing pods to see if it can repair some of the damage, at least.”

“I’m okay.  I haven’t had… I can breathe.  It’s fine.”  Keith shuffled his helmet in his hands.  “For what it’s worth, if there was anything I could give to change what happened to you, I would.  In a second.”

Shiro nodded, and Keith tried not to think about the fact that he certainly didn’t care.  “Thank you,” he said anyway.”

“How long did it take?  The operation.”

“Not very long.  Maybe twenty minutes.”

“And how long—the feelings you had, how long did they take to fade?”

“They were gone when I woke up,” he said simply.

Instant relief, then.  Keith could be free of this.  But then neither of them would remember what it was like to be in love, and nothing would remain of all the things Keith _felt._

They would be new, different people.  Not really themselves.  No one else would know, not really.  And Shiro, Keith’s Shiro, would be lost forever.

“Then the operation can wait.”

—

Shiro found Allura later, shaking his head.  “He said no.  When it gets worse, maybe, but not right now.”

Allura frowned.  “We already had to take him out of the field for treatment once.  And he’s just getting worse.  We can’t let him willfully steer himself into death; the universe _needs_ Voltron.”

“He won’t listen to any arguments to the contrary.”

She sighed and rubbed her eyes.  “It must be important to him.  But… he’s important to _us._  Even if the universe didn’t need him, I’m not sure what I’d do without him.  Without any of you.”

Shiro watched her.  “You’re saying that the surgery can’t wait.”

“…From a logical standpoint, the longer we leave it, the harder it will be to operate.  If it grows into the lining of his lungs, then we won’t even be able to do _that_ much.”  She bit the tip of her thumb.  “At what point is it acceptable to step in for his own good?”

“I won’t let you force him,” Shiro said steadily.  “I may not have emotions, but that would be objectively wrong.”

“Will you let him die instead?”  Allura rubbed at her face.  “I understand the ethical complications.  I would never—under normal circumstances, then it would be completely out of the question.  But the people who will die if he does, Shiro.  I don’t know what to do.”

“I won’t allow it unless he agrees,” Shiro said firmly.  “That’s what the Galra did to me.  I won’t have us do the same to him.”

Allura flinched a little at the comparison, but even as she wilted, Shiro thought he detected a hint of relief.  “Then… I’ll follow your lead.”  She dropped her hands.  “How do we save him, Shiro?”

“If he agrees, we can operate.  But not until then.”

“Then we must try to convince him.”

“I’m going to need to be the one to do it.”

“…Yes.  I think you’re probably right.”  Allura watched him with a kind of desperation.  “I’ll… leave it to you, then?”

Shiro nodded.  He didn’t know how he was going to convince Keith, but he would absolutely find a way.

—

He delayed, though.  One day, two.  A week.  Something about this seemed… wrong.  Off.  It puzzled him, because there should have been an identifiable reason for it to do so, but he couldn’t find one.  Perhaps his instincts were reacting to something his conscious mind had missed.

Still, he finally tracked down Keith after a particularly bad attack.  He entered Keith’s room, steeling himself.  Keith would undoubtedly know what this was to be about.

“I need to talk to you.”

As Shiro watched, Keith blinked back tears from his eyes, and with each cough, he tensed from the pain.  The healing pods did almost nothing now other than waste everyone’s time.

He threw an arm over his eyes and leaned back against the wall.

“…I know.”

Shiro exhaled.  How was he going to word this?  He had to be careful, and use all of his knowledge of Keith to build his argument.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“…It’s time for me to die.  Isn’t it?”  Keith didn’t lower his arm.

“What do you mean?”

“Either I actually finally kick the bucket, or it’s time to operate and… well, they both end up pretty much the same.  I’ll be gone.”

Shiro swallowed.  An opening.  He needed to tell Keith that yes, it was time to operate.

“You’re going to die for this, aren’t you?” was what came out instead, quiet and certain as he realized, all at once, that this was undeniably how it all would go.

“I don’t want to die,” Keith blurted, lowering his arm but not looking up.  “But… I would.  I will.  This is everything I have.”

It hurt to hear that, just a bit.  Shiro didn’t understand why.  Though not outright painful, it left Shiro… faintly nauseous.  Almost ill.  He could be coming down with something.  He should have the castle run a diagnostic.

“Okay,” he said quietly.  “I won’t ask you again.”

Keith finally looked up.  “You won’t?  Really?”

Shiro shook his head.  “I’ll tell the rest of the Castle.”

He didn’t want to be here.

—

Keith still struggled to believe he’d heard Shiro correctly.

Though a little embarrassed at his own drama, the other emotions raging within swallowed that whole.

He wasn’t exactly sure how the agreement made him feel.  If Shiro had given up, then there really was no chance for him now.

But he was glad that Shiro was willing to respect him.

“We should—I should ask Coran how long I have left.”  He dragged a hand down his face.  “And I think it’s time to ask Red to help us find a new paladin.”

“That can wait until… later.”

Keith leveled a look at Shiro, seeing the way he curved in on himself, like he was trying to be small.  It was the most emotion, or anything approximating it, that he’d seen on Shiro since before Kerberos.

“I don’t know how much of ‘later’ I have,” he said gently.

“We have some time, at least,” Shiro replied, all businesslike again.  “Like I said, I’ll tell the rest.”

He turned to head out.  Keith’s chin dropped, and he hid in his hair.

“And I’ll be… here.”

_Alone._

That wasn’t fair.  Lance had been visiting him a lot, and Hunk plied him with new food daily.  Pidge propped her laptop next to wherever Keith was training and refused to budge even when she got in the way.

They were scared to lose him.  Keith was scared to go.

But the only person his heart wanted as the edge loomed was forever out of reach.


	7. Chapter 7

Shiro made his way to the common room.  Five sets of eyes landed on him.  No point in delaying the inevitable.

“He’s elected not to have the surgery,” Shiro said, quiet but firm.  “The matter is closed.”

Pidge turned and hurled herself into Hunk’s chest.  Her shoulders shook enough to give herself away despite hiding her face.

“That can’t be it,” Hunk insisted, just as quiet.  “We beat Galra forces every day and Keith has never let anything kick his ass.  And then his own body turns against him.  How is this _fair?_ ”

“This is bullshit,” Lance snapped.

“It’s his decision to make, and I’m going to respect it, as are all of you.  We’ll make the rest of his time as comfortable as possible.”

“Whatever.  I’m going to go to the… the library.  I’m not just giving up,” Lance announced.

Pidge rose at that, wiping her nose on the back of her arm with an audible sniff.  “I’m going to message out again and ask if any other races have a solution for this.  Someone has to know.”

Shiro watched them both for a moment.  “I hope you succeed.”

“What can I do for him?” Allura asked, sadness in her voice.  Behind her, Coran and Hunk looked to Shiro expectantly.

“I… I don’t know.”

Did this make him a failure of a leader?

Allura nodded shakily.  “Painkillers, maybe.  We can have the Castle create an oxygen tank for his room, too.  Coran can make a call button.  Could he walk when you left him?”

“Yes.  He seemed to be doing all right, besides the attacks.”

“We have a hoverchair somewhere.  I keep it around just in case—”

The doors opened with their characteristic whoosh.

—

Keith looked up to a sea of eyes watching him.

“Who died?” he tried to joke, smile wonky and wrong.

No one laughed.

Lance spoke up first.  “Keith.  Keith, this is bullshit—you can’t—”

“Lance,” Shiro snapped, glaring at him.  “We’ve been over this.”

“But Shiro—”

“That’s _enough!_ ”

Keith stepped forward.  “No, Shiro, I owe everyone an explanation.  I just…”  He took a breath, not as deep as he needed, feeling the pressure at the base of his lungs.  “I’m sorry.  I know that this really, _really_ sucks.  And I don’t want to make this war any harder for you guys.  But I just can’t become… like that.  No offense, Shiro.  But I know, if you’d had the choice, you’d never have picked this either.  Everybody tried really hard, but—well, this might just be a fight we have to lose.”

Keith’s voice broke.  “I wish I could stay.”

Shiro nodded.  “I understand.  And that’s what I told them.  We aren’t going to force you.”

“…Thanks,” Keith managed.  He could see Lance watching him from the side, like it would take too much to look at him head on.  “I’ll help as much as I can.  Maybe Red and I can find someone cool as my protégé.”

“Fucking stupid,” Lance snapped before looking away.

“Yeah.  It’s stupid.”  Keith shook his head, turning back to Shiro to see him watching Keith, expression… perturbed.

“Hey, stop with the kicked puppy look.  The Galra will think Voltron’s leader has gone soft.”  Keith knocked a gentle push against Shiro’s arm.

Shiro shook himself.  “I’m fine,” he said quietly—

Right before Lance stormed out.

Keith looked up in surprise.  Pidge took a moment to look between them, then followed Lance quickly.

“He’ll calm down eventually.  Right?” Keith asked.

“He needs to learn to respect your decisions,” Shiro said quietly.

“This is Lance we’re talking about.  He wouldn’t be him if he agreed with me on something.”

“I don’t care,” Shiro said tightly.  “It’s not his decision to make.”  Keith watched as he met the eyes of the others, making his position clear.

Allura nodded her support, and Hunk pensively reached out to pat Keith on the back.

“Thanks, guys.”  Keith cleared his throat.  “Don’t be too harsh on him, though.  He’s been… really nice.”

It was sad, that he and Lance had only managed to forge a friendship now.  But it was something.

“And now we change the subject,” Shiro said firmly, not looking at Keith.

“Oh.  Okay.”

Keith felt a flash of… something.  Something sad and dark.  Shiro wanted to talk about something other than his imminent demise, of course.

Sure.  Fine.

—

The conversation shifted.  Shiro should feel better.

He didn’t.

“There’s a beautiful planet with waterfalls that look like rainbows!  I think a small break there might do us some good.  Plus!  I hear there’s a base nearby where we can make contact with a small rebel group.”  Coran twiddled one end of his mustache.

Allura clapped her hands.  “A vacation sounds like a wonderful idea!  I haven’t seen Azol since I was a girl.”

“That’ll work,” Shiro said absently.  He turned to Hunk, who had been quiet.  “What do you think?”

Hunk paused, glancing over at Keith as if he’d wanted to share when they were alone, but then spoke anyway.  “I think this is a lot harder for Keith than he’ll ever let us know.  And… I also think that just letting this happen is the easy option for the rest of us.  Too easy.”  He stood and leveled a look at Shiro.  “Why are you giving up on him?  The rest of us haven’t.”

Shiro met his eyes.  “There’s a difference between giving up and respecting his decision.  If there’s some other way to cure him, I would be happy to consider it.”

“It’s just that I haven’t seen you looking for one.  And that’s pretty weird, you know?”

Shiro frowned.  “Pidge and Coran are researching.  They’re much better at it than me.  I’m put to better use elsewhere, where my skill set is relevant.”

“And where is that, exactly?”  Hunk asked, tone not antagonistic, not yet, but not as light as it could be.

“Hunk—” Keith began warningly, but Shiro stepped in first.

“Piloting Black.  Examining strategy.  Looking for alliances and other places to strike against the Galra.”

“That’s all great for Voltron, but I’m asking what you do for _Keith._ ”

“What is there that I can do for him?”

Keith cut them off.  “Enough.  I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I don’t really care anymore.  Shiro tried to help in his own way, and now it’s over.  Just let it go.”

“If something is wrong between members of the team, we shouldn’t let it fester,” Shiro said reasonably.

“It’s just convenient, isn’t it, that when he feels this way, he’ll do anything you want.  Completely under your thumb.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Keith growled.

Shrio straightened.  “He isn’t under my thumb.  He’s welcome to make whatever decisions he likes.”

“I decided this on my own—”

“After talking it over with Shiro.  You haven’t said anything to the rest of us.  Lance has had to pry this out of you, and now Shiro comes in telling us it’s time to stop even trying?  It’s fishy.  I love you guys, and I respect your decisions, but this has a stink to it and I can’t just let it go.”

“I didn’t tell anyone to stop trying,” Shiro said.  “I said that we won’t be forcing Keith to do the surgery.”

“Keith’s been saying he won’t get the surgery since the beginning.  Coming in and announcing that at this stage definitely means ‘stop trying.’”

“Well maybe I _am_ done trying!” Keith yelled, then caught himself.  “Maybe I don’t want to hope anymore.  I’m tired,” he admitted, quieter this time, sinking into a vacant chair.

Shiro lifted his hands.  “Everyone, calm down.  We can’t have a rational discussion if everyone is arguing.”

“Nothing would make this discussion rational.  We love Keith, and we need him to save everyone in the universe.  Double whammy.”  Hunk made an ‘x’ with his arms.

Keith scowled.  “There will be more than just five of us capable of flying a lion.  This isn’t a sci-fi B movie.”

“Not a chance I’m willing to take, and also not the most important part of what I said.  Shiro might seem pretty apathetic about this whole thing, but everyone else needs you around, Keith.  We’re a team.”

Keith crossed his arms, hugging himself with them.  Shiro shook his head.

“I’m not apathetic.  I just don’t have the right to force someone to do that to themselves when they’ve said so, explicitly, that they don’t want to.  And I don’t think that you could do it, either.”

“Have you told him even once that you want him to stay?”  Hunk’s voice grew icy.  “That you’ll miss him?”

Shiro looked determinedly away from Keith’s flinch.

“He doesn’t feel things, Hunk.  Of course he won’t miss me.”

Shiro swallowed.  Something in him wanted to vomit.  He really needed to check with the healing pods.

“I will deeply regret losing Keith as a member of this team.”

Keith barked a self-deprecating laugh and lifted a hand.  “See?  Let it go.”

“I do mean that,” Shiro insisted.

“Don’t worry, Shiro.  It’s okay to be the way you are.”

“I know that.  But I want you to know that you will be missed.”

“Shiro…”  Keith watched him, confused.  “I don’t—”

A beat of silence.

“You don’t what?”

“I don’t think that you mean that the way that it sounds.”

“I do mean it the way it sounds.”  Even to his own ears, Shiro’s voice sounded almost irritated.

“You literally can’t.  So.”  Keith shrugged.

“That’s not _true._ ”

—

Keith blinked over at Shiro.  He couldn’t have heard that correctly, could he?  But what other way…

“You’re mad.”

“I am completely sane, thank you,” Shiro said flatly.

“I meant angry.  You’re… you’re getting _annoyed._ ”

Shiro sighed, fixing Keith with a look.  “I’m not, Keith.  I know that you’re looking for anything to save you right now, but it will only hurt to get your hopes up.”

Keith recoiled like he’d been slapped.

The words twisted a knife in his chest more painfully than even he could have expected.  He tried to force the sting of tears away from the back of his nose.

“Yeah.  Sure,” he said hollowly.  “Letting my imagination run wild, right?”

“Keith, don’t do this,” Shiro insisted.

“I’m not doing anything.  You’re right.  I was just reaching.”  Keith pushed his chair out and stood.

“Keith, please.”  That insufferably reasonable emotionless voice again.  “You don’t have to leave.”

“I know.  I don’t have to stay either.”  He felt stupid, and Hunk wasn’t going to let this go, and he didn’t need to be reminded how little fucks Shiro gave about his impending death.

Shiro sighed, reaching up to run fingers through his hair.

“All right.  Take care of yourself.”

—

Keith left, and then he took Red, and left some more.

The vast emptiness of space helped to put things in perspective.  He was a tiny speck on the wobbly, impossible timeline of the universe, and his feelings didn’t really matter to anyone but him.

Out there was someone who could take his place on the team.  He’d start work on that tomorrow, but today the ship burned behind him.  It was like a part of him always knew where Shiro was, making it hard to move away from him.

Red pushed at his mind, and he experienced her disappointment like it was a ghost of his own.  Anger, that he was giving up.  So he opened to her, showed her what he would have to sacrifice.  He showed her the first conversation Keith had had in three months when Shiro stopped him in the middle of the Garrison.  He showed her the time he’d smiled so wide for a whole day that his face hurt when he went to sleep that night.  He showed her Shiro smiling, laughing, studying so hard he got a crease between his brow that Keith just had to stick a penny in.

He showed her family.

She showed him ravaged planets and dying civilizations.

“Yeah.  I’m selfish, aren’t I?  I’m sorry, Red.  I just can’t.  Everything will have been pointless if I let them kill that part of me.”

She understood the sentiment.  But she didn’t forgive him.

He turned back to the castle.  After a coughing fit in the hangar, he developed a wheeze that never stopped, no matter how many times he cleared his throat.

He was running out of time.


	8. Chapter 8

Lance was there to meet him the fifth time Keith left.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he demanded, looking more scared than angry.

Keith’s chin snapped up.  “I went to clear my head.”  Lance had no right to criticize, not when it had taken him ages to realize where Keith was going.

“Yeah, well, I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t die while you were out there.  What the hell are you doing, huh?”

A humorless snort broke free of Keith’s nose.  “I’m not going to die today, Lance.”

“Yeah, how do you know that?  I don’t exactly trust your judgement right now!”

“Why?” Keith asked, genuinely confused.  “I can still think fine.  I can still breathe.  Mostly.  It’s not gonna be today.”

“But what about tomorrow?  Or the day after?  How… how can you keep going through this?”

“I don’t know when.  That kind of sucks to think about.  But I know it’s not _now_ , and that’s gotta be enough.”  He attempted to stride past Lance and towards the main ship.

But Lance, of course, stepped right in front of him.  “How are you gonna let this _kill_ you?  He doesn’t care about you anymore!”

Thwarted, Keith folded his arms around himself and glared.  “That’s not Shiro’s fault.  You wouldn’t understand!”

“What’s there to understand?”  Lance took a deep breath.  “Hunk told me what he said about Shiro.”

Keith glared through the floor like he could burn it if he tried hard enough.  “Hunk was wrong about Shiro,” he asserted to the metal tiles.

“How are you sure?” Lance shot back.  “How do you think he’d react if you tried to get it?”

“The surgery?”  Keith’s scowl became a frown.  “He’d be pleased.  He wouldn’t have to worry about having a complete team.  It’s what he’s been telling me to do since the start.”

Lance stared at him.  “If he thought it was the best course of action, he’d still be trying to talk you into it.  He’s willing to let you die, and whatever reason he might have for it, it’s not ethics.  It’s complete shit.”

“Well, he definitely never told me to refuse the surgery.  Shiro might not have emotions, but he’s still _good._  He’s still Shiro, and he wouldn’t just let anybody die without having a good reason.  This mess is on me.  You can blame me if you want to; that’s okay.  But don’t blame him.”

“Then tell him you are getting it,” Lance taunted.  “See if he’s fine with that.  Maybe he _does_ have a good reason for letting you die!”

“It’s not fair to say I’ll do it when I’m not going to,” Keith said, arms tucked tight around himself.

It also wasn’t fair to himself.  He didn’t want to dangle the chance of survival like a carrot in front of his own nose.

Surviving isn’t _living._

“It’s not fair of him to do this to you!”

“What did he do, huh?  You think I can blame him for getting strapped down by aliens and having his lungs cut open against his will?  Like it isn’t _my_ fault he got like that in the first place?  I wish there was someone else to blame!  But it’s just me!”  His lungs ached, his throat raw, and when he felt the catch, Keith had to stop to cough wetly into his palm for far too long.

Lance clenched his fists and looked away from the violet and red petals covering the hangar floor.  “He’s to blame for being willing to let you _die_ rather than give up his control over you.”

“I… _what?_ ”  Lance’s words confused Keith so much that he could barely process them.  “No one controls me.”

“Bullshit he doesn’t!  This is so fucked up!”

“Control me to do what?  What could he possibly make me do that I’m not already doing?  I’m on the team, fighting the war, piloting a giant cat.  There’s nothing else I could give him even if he wanted it.”

“Yeah, and if you weren’t in love with him, maybe you wouldn’t listen to him like that anymore!”

Keith reeled back, tensing, the words hitting him like a slap to the face.  No one said the ‘L’ word, not to Keith’s face.  “He—!  Shiro is a good leader!  I trust him to give the right orders.  That’s not—”

Did Keith just follow Shiro because he loved him?

Was he blind to something obvious?

Keith’s head spun.

“Well, I _don’t_ trust his orders,” Lance continued, fists clenched.  “If he could send you to your death but get a win for it, do you think he’d do it?”

“No!” Keith blurted.  But Shiro didn’t have any attachment to him now.  To any of them.  Would a win outweigh Keith’s usefulness, especially torn to pieces as he was?  “No… he wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, you sounds so sure,” Lance snapped.  “You know, there are so many people out there who won’t treat you like garbage or get you killed.”

“Well, I never met any of them.  Shiro’s the only one who ever gave a fuck.”  He rucked a hand through his hair and bit his tongue.  Lance’s glare had deepened at that, but Keith didn’t really care why.  “Whatever.  If Shiro is as bad as you think he is, it still doesn’t matter.  I don’t want to turn into what he’s turned into.  I don’t want to live like that.”

“Fine.  So he’s brainwashed you, then.  And you’ve let him.”

“Would you let them do it?  The operation?”

He’d meant it as a point for his own argument, but he found himself genuinely wanting to know.  Was he really so crazy to not want that life?

Shiro had fought it.

Lance inhaled sharply, then looked away.  “I’d have stopped pining over someone who couldn’t love me back and found someone else a long time ago.”

Keith laughed bitterly.  “Why didn’t I think of that?  Great idea.”

Lance turned away, arms crossed.  “You know, he’s not that great.”

“Why do you hate him so much?”

“Because he treats you like shit!”

“He doesn’t!  He’d never do anything like that!”

“Then tell him!  See if he’s fine with it!”

“Fine!” Keith blustered, face reddening.  “Fine, I’ll lie and tell him and you’ll see that you’re saying awful things about a great… great man—”

His cough cut off the rest of his words, deep and lingering.  Lance watched the petals flutter to the ground.

“Doesn’t look so great to me.”

“Stop blaming him—” Keith tried, but he couldn’t get it out.  He stumbled sideways to lean against Red’s leg.

Lance lunged forward to grab him.  “Careful!”

Keith waved him off.  “I’m fine!  I don’t need your help.”  He started making his way towards the door.  He had to clear Shiro’s name before he kicked the bucket.

“Keith, dude, you need _so_ much fucking help.”  Lance followed angrily.

“I got this far on my own.”  They neared the bridge, and Keith’s gut twisted.  He burst through the door.

Shiro turned immediately, arm lifting at the intrusion, but as he spotted Keith, the purple glow faded from his arm.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll do it,” Keith announced.  He clenched his palms.

Shiro frowned slightly.  “Do what?”

“The operation.  I’ll have this stuff removed.”

He watched Shiro’s face for a reaction.

Shiro shook his head slowly, as if he hadn’t heard right.  “What?”

Keith felt the world tilt a little.  He’d expected Shiro to be… well.  As pleased as Shiro could be, now.

“I’ll have the operation to clear my lungs,” he said, slowly and clearly.

His mouth was desert dry, but he swallowed anyway.

—

The meaning of Keith’s words finally clicked, and Shiro’s reaction was instant.

“ _No!_ ” he snapped—yelled, really, hands immediately slamming down on the table in front of him.

It was Keith.  This wasn’t—he wouldn’t be Keith anymore, if he did this.

Keith jumped.  His brows drew in a frown, but his expression shifted between confusion and despair.

“No?”

Shiro shook his head.  He knew everyone was staring, but he didn’t care.  Knew he was shaking, but didn’t care about that, either.  “You can’t—can’t have that happen to you, Keith.”

“It would save the team, and the universe.  Everything would be solved.  And if I can’t feel anything, then I won’t care that I have no feelings.  There’s no reason to keep refusing.  I thought it’s what you wanted.”

Shiro kept shaking his head, and something ached—cracked—inside his chest.  He inhaled sharply, wondering what was wrong with him, and had to press his hand to the middle of his sternum.

“But—but that isn’t—”  It made sense.  Logically, it did.  So why was it the most horrible thing he had ever heard?

He lifted his eyes to meet Keith’s, and noticed, to his confusion, that there was a cool wetness on his cheeks.

Keith, vibrant and passionate and fierce and almost feral.  All of that, wiped away.  Gone.  As good as dead.

“Please,” was all he could say.

—

Lance was right.

Keith couldn’t even look at Shiro, couldn’t even take in his outline against the stars.  Shiro, the only person Keith ever trusted, wanted Keith’s pain to continue until he was dead.  God knew why.  It couldn’t be because he wanted control.  Keith couldn’t believe that or he’d have nothing left.

Still.  Suddenly, avoiding surgery didn’t feel like Keith’s decision anymore.

“Dying’s a waste.  Living like this is, too.  How soon can we have the machinery set up?”  He threw the last question at Coran.

Shiro stumbled away from the table, making his way towards Keith.  “Keith, wait—”

A hand closed around his arm and Keith just wasn’t strong enough to make himself pull away.

What was the point in staying and preserving those feelings?  He and Shiro never even dated.  They were just two people who flew too close to each other for a while.

He’d given up, he realized.  If he was honest with himself, he’d been giving up for a long time.

“What?”  He finally turned his betrayed glare on Shiro fully, but he wasn’t prepared for wild eyes and tearstained cheeks.  “Shiro,” he murmured, shocked at seeing an expression, any expression, on a face that was usually a blank canvas.

Shiro stepped in, when Keith didn’t pull away, wrapping his arms around Keith fully and pulling him with a startling desperation.

Keith was pressed into the soft texture of Shiro’s jacket, and for a moment he froze there.  He could feel Shiro shaking against him.  If this was a ploy to keep him under control, then fine.  All he’d wanted was for Shiro to look at him with any sort of feeling since he’d found him on that table in the desert.

A tear hit his cheek, but it wasn’t his.

“Not you,” Shiro whispered.  “Please, god, not you too.”

—

Shiro didn’t know why he so desperately had to do this, but he _must._

Everything hurt, and he didn’t understand why.

“I don’t understand,” Keith breathed.  “You… care?”

“I…”

It didn’t feel right to say yes.  Because Shiro couldn’t care.  He knew this.

But he pulled back, taking Keith’s face gently in his hands.  His chest heaved, and it _hurt_ , in a way that it hadn’t in a long, long time.

He didn’t know what to tell Keith.  How did he articulate this, that he was the most important thing in the world to Shiro, that Shiro needed to do _anything_ he could to keep Keith safe and happy?

“Why are you crying?” Keith asked gently.  “You’re not supposed to be able to cry.”

He lifted a hand to cover one of Shiro’s, his flesh one, and leaned into the touch.

There was a tickle in the back of Shiro’s throat.

He was crying, then.  That… didn’t make sense.

He lifted an arm to cover his mouth as he coughed.  Out of the corner of his eye…

Tiny red petals floated to the floor.

Keith’s breath sucked in fast, where Shiro’s stopped completely.  The silence around them was absolute as they both processed the flash of red, soft little petals curling on the metal tile.

“No,” Keith croaked, shaking his head.  “The universe—it can’t be this fucking—no.   _No._  That’s not okay!  You’re cured!  And even if you weren’t, I love you.   _I love you._ ”  He threw his arms around Shiro’s neck and pulled him in tight.  “How is this fair?!”

Shiro didn’t know.  He didn’t understand.  None of this made sense.  None of it had ever made sense, no matter how much he’d tried to fool himself.

He inhaled raggedly, and coughed again into his hand.  But this time, it was a single silver lily.

Shiro had heard of this, yes.  When Hanahaki grew bad enough to kill, but then was requited…

But it had always been requited.  He was cured, yes, and the lily was proof of that, but—

Fear and elation coursed through him in equal measure.

Fear.

Hope.

Elation.

He _felt._

With the sudden surge of emotions coursing through him,, he wrapped his arms around Keith’s neck and kissed him with a frantic desperation.

It tasted like blood, and bitter flowers, but it was Keith.  This was Keith.

He was trembling, but it didn’t matter, because—because he loved Keith.


	9. Chapter 9

Keith found himself with an armful of Shiro, and this time he kissed like he was alive.  The cold indifference and mechanical motions were gone, and instead Shiro clutched at him with a desperation Keith _knew_ he wasn’t imagining.

He curled his fingers in Shiro’s shirt and eased the kiss back down into something slow and easy.  When he finally pulled back, they both gasped heavily.  Keith leaned his forehead against Shiro’s and shuddered.

“Shiro… are you—are you back?” he asked tentatively.  “Please say something.”

“I love you,” Shiro said, voice trembling, and the tears rolled freely down his face.  “God, Keith; I love you so much, and I don’t know how I ever stopped.”

Keith found a low whine escaping unbidden from the bottom of his chest.  He hid his face in Shiro’s neck and breathed deep, hardly daring to hope.

“Say it again,” he begged.

“I _love_ you,” Shiro gasped, then sobbed, squeezing him tightly.

And that’s when Keith felt it: the slow movement of heavy, waxy, _gross_ up his throat.  He hacked into his hand, shoulders heaving, and a waterfall of purple and red tumbled from his lips.  For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, could barely think.  But then it finally cleared, and for the first time in weeks, he could breathe without wheezing.

He pulled the lily from his mouth and just looked at it.  So much heartache for one little flower.

“…Does this mean we’re okay?” he asked, refusing to move away from Shiro’s orbit.

“I… I think so,” Shiro breathed, eyes wide, face pale.  “I… we…” he looked back over at Keith.  “…Oh.”

Keith shrank, too used to the universe fucking up his life.  “Oh?”

Shiro’s face spread into a grin.  “And… and you love me.”

_Oh._

“Of course I love you,” Keith replied, heartfelt.  “More than anything.”  Keith thought that it was maybe a lie, because he’d felt more anger than love for stoic Shiro.  More frustration than racing heartbeat.  But this Shiro was _his_ , wasn’t he?  And their love was almost deadly in its realness.

Shiro just leaned in for another kiss again, desperate and a little clumsy.

Off to the side, Lance cleared his throat.

Keith deliberately allowed the kiss to continue for a few moments beyond Lance’s interruption.  All of this could still come crashing down in a second, and he didn’t want to waste a moment of it.  When they parted, he leaned gently against Shiro’s cheek to look back at the others.

His face felt weird, kind of achy.  He realized with a start that it was because he couldn’t stop grinning.

Everyone else had half-busied themselves with low conversation or a task at their situation, but Lance was staring him down.

Keith met blue eyes without fear.  Lance was wrong.  Lance was so, so wrong.

Lance’s eyes slid away, shame creeping over his face, but even Keith couldn’t miss the relief that followed.

—

Shiro could feel them all looking at him, feeling himself slowly flush.  It was such a foreign sensation, and all of the emotions seemed to be pouring through a hole of ragged glass in the pit that was his chest.

He swallowed and turned to hide his face in Keith’s shoulder; god, he needed to be touching Keith right now, and couldn’t imagine stopping.

“I… I need to be… how do I ask them to…”

“It’s okay to be away from people when you need it,” Keith said gently.  “You taught me that.”

He squeezed Shiro’s hands carefully, and Shiro swallowed, hard.  If he raised his voice above a whisper, he wasn’t sure he’d make it.

“Can you ask them for me?” he asked, voice hoarse.  “To… to go.  Or maybe we should… maybe we should go.”

“Yeah, sure.  Anything you want, Shiro.”  He gently gripped Shiro’s shoulder and lifted his head.

“I’m taking Shiro to the med bay.  I want to make sure his lungs are okay.”

No one stopped them, and Shiro followed immediately, grateful for the opportunity to get away from the prying eyes as he took a ragged breath.

Emotions swam over him, within him, the first in a year, and he struggled to handle the intensity.  His love for Keith had returned, yes, but… so had the memories.  So had the recollection of what he went through at the hands of the Galra.

A lot.  So much.  It might be too much.

The moment they reached the med bay, he sank onto the bed, head in his hands, and let out another sob.

“Shiro—!”  Keith followed him to the bed, arms up in case he needed to catch him.  “What can I do?”

Shiro fumbled for Keith, pulling him in, and buried his face in Keith’s chest.

He didn’t know.  But he did know that Keith’s presence… it made all of this bearable.

God, how had Keith been able to stand it, watching Shiro these past months?  Looking back, Shiro had to recoil even at himself.

He let out a sob, pulling him even tighter.  “I love you,” he whispered, curling close, wishing he could just stay like this forever.

—

Keith tried to calm the thundering in his heart.  His worst fear was that it would grow back.  That those giant, dark thorns embedded themselves deep into the delicate flesh keeping Shiro moving.

And it was _Keith’s_ fault that he was hurting.

Keith bit his lip and carefully laid a hand on one shaking shoulder, then gently gathered him close and smoothed a hand through his hair.  Seeing Shiro hurting made Keith’s heart turn slow and sick, but at the same time, watching him feel, really _feel_ , filled Keith with wonder.

“It’s okay to cry.  It’s better to feel stuff and let it out than try and hide it.”  Keith’s sage advice was from the one shrink he’d ever been sent to.  She’d had her shit together, and for the few sessions his foster-family-of-the-month bothered to try out, she explained basic life things to him that no one ever had before.  He wondered if Shiro needed someone like that, now.  Keith wondered if the stuff in his head was going to feel different now that Shiro could actually care about it.

Keith knew that he wasn’t up to the task of dealing with that, but he’d try.

“I… I’m sorry,” Shiro gasped between sniffles, wrapping his arms around Keith’s waist.  “I’m… I’m so sorry, for everything I’ve… you were going to…”

“No, no.  Don’t ever be sorry for what you’ve gone through.  It wasn’t your fault.  None of it.  I’m sorry that I fucked up everything back home, and made you think that I never… that I didn’t… you were _always_ the most important person to me.  The only person.  I’m the reason you went out into space with that disease.  I would never blame you for what the Galra did, and I won’t let you blame yourself, either.”

Today had to be, Keith thought, the most he’d spoken in months.  He tried to curl around Shiro as much as he could, so close that they felt like they might be one person, and take the sadness into his own body through pure will.

“You didn’t fuck up,” Shiro said hoarsely.  “No, I… I should’ve said something.  If I had… then…”  He swallowed.  “God, Keith,” he choked out.  “There’s… there’s so much.  A year of it, and I…”

Keith chewed his bottom lip so hard that the sudden, coppery tang of blood on his teeth didn’t surprise him.  Shiro made noises like a wooden animal, and Keith was afraid he was going to lose his mind.  He couldn’t get any closer, and he couldn’t get any tighter.

“It’s okay.  It’s okay,” Keith said gently, but he wasn’t sure.  How did he fix this?  He clenched fists in Shiro’s clothes and rocked them both gently.  “I’ve got you.  We can talk about it, if you want to.  I think you just need to… let yourself feel it all.”

He hoped.  God, he hoped.  Keith wanted to put Shiro in a pod for a scan _right now_ to make sure his lungs were clear, but he also couldn’t let go.  Shiro needed him.  _Shiro needed him._

—

Everything came back in flashes.  The first person Shiro had killed, helpless and curled up on the arena’s floor.  The muzzle that they had strapped to his face when he fought them, digging into the bridge of his nose and leaving its indelible mark.  The coughing attack that had crippled him, leaving him torn and bloody in the middle of a fight, red petals scattered over the floor of the arena.  Sitting in a cell, knowing that tomorrow, they would take his arm—and his heart.

He let out a of moan of agony as the memories coursed through him, physically painful.

“It was… terrible,” Shiro whispered, a shudder rippling through him.  “I… fuck, Keith, when I was with them… I forgot how… how horrible…”

“That’s over now, I promise.  It’s done and gone.  Now you’re here, and safe, and you’re saving the entire universe with people who love you.  Oh, Shiro, they’re gonna love you so much now that you’re really here.  This is you, and you’re… well, you’re everything that’s _good._ ”

“I was so scared,” Shiro gasped raggedly, letting out another violent shudder.  “I _knew_ what they were gonna do to me, and they just… they left me, to think about it, that they were gonna cut out everything that made me imperfect.”  He let out a bitter laugh.  “And… and they did.  They took my arm, and my conscience—fuck, Keith, that was… the only thing that kept me sane, remembering what was right and wrong, but once it was gone…”

Killing others was the practical thing to do, after all, to survive.

—

“You didn’t know what you were doing.  Don’t blame yourself for that.”  Keith gripped the top of Shiro’s right arm and squeezed.  “They took what they could.  But you made it back.  To me.”

“I did,” Shiro croaked.  “I knew, so very much, what I was doing.  And I… god.”  He rubbed at his face.”

Keith’s mouth opened before he had a chance to realize what he was saying.  “That’s not the same thing.  You did what you had to do.  I would have killed everyone in the arena myself just to have you back, Shiro.  Humans are selfish like that, but you… you’re good.”

Shiro shook his head violently.  “No— _no._  You say that, but taking a life…  Keith, until you’ve done it, _really_ done it, looked the min the eyes and made that call… you wouldn’t say that.”

Keith stopped, considered, and held his tongue.  He tried to imagine cutting down someone who didn’t deserve it.  Someone begging him not to take the last swing.

He imagined Shiro.

He could.  He could do it.  What was that everyone had always said about him?  “Heartless.”  He’d be heartless for Shiro.  Shiro had to be heartless for him.

“I’ll just have to forgive you for the both of us.  Until you can forgive yourself.”

And that wouldn’t be for a while, he could already tell.  They’d come through the worst of it, but there was so much work to be done, still.

But it would be okay.  Because Shiro had come back to him.

Shiro exhaled with a shudder.  “I don’t know that I ever can,” he said quietly, pressing closer.  “But… thank you.”

“Always,” Keith promised.  He hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to see pain on Shiro’s face again.

He wondered about that shrink he’d had, all those years ago.  He wondered, again, if they might be able to find someone like that for Shiro.  Because no way in hell was he going to give up on Shiro.

“This… isn’t going to be easy,” Shiro murmured.  “It… it hurts.  I can still fly, maybe, but… the rest…”

“Shhh,” Keith murmured.  All he could do now was comb fingers through Shiro’s hair.  So he did.  “Don’t worry about that.  Not right now.  I’m sure Allura and Coran have already started planning.  Just in case.”  They had been for me, he didn’t say.  “For now, we’ll just focus on getting better.  Together.”

Shiro laughed, attempting to sound bitter, but Keith could pick up the fondness in it.

“And you’re gonna put up with me while I do that, huh?  You do so much, Keith.  How many times are you gonna put up with me making your life even more complicated?”

Keith sighed adoringly.  Shiro was curled up in his arms, warm, and _here._

And he loved Keith.

They would be able spend the night together now, probably, gentle affection and curled in each other’s arms.

They would be able to spend so much more together.

Keith pressed a gentle kiss to the top of Shiro’s head, affectionate warmth filling the spot where once only pain had existed.

“As many times as it takes.”


End file.
